RUGBY:Rugby is a tough physical game and all professionals, forced or not, have to prepare for the inevitable, writes RICHARD FITZPATRICK

THE AVERAGE length of a career in professional rugby in Ireland is six years. Not everyone can have the longevity Brian O’Driscoll has enjoyed, an international since 1999. Rugby, more than others, is a cruel, physical game. For every John Hayes, there’s a Simon Best. For every Peter Stringer, there’s a Ciarán Scally or Conor McGuinness. For every Alan Quinlan, there’s a David Corkery.

Corkery, who has shoulders like a doorframe, ensconced himself on the blindside of Ireland’s backrow in 1994, a big block of a man to match in stature the oversized English backrow in fashion at the time. He was 21. A year later, the game drifted, falteringly, into professionalism.

Corkery sailed off with it, docking in the port city of Bristol for a couple of years before returning to his native Cork and Munster. In one of the old interprovincial series games against Connacht at Thomond Park in the autumn of 1999, he ripped his Achilles’ tendon. It was a week before Munster’s first Heineken Cup game that season, the start of an odyssey. Quinlan, two years younger than him, slipped into his number six jersey for Munster and is still playing in the tournament. A few months afterwards, Corkery went back running but snapped his other Achilles’ tendon, which forced his retirement.

“To be honest, the rest of the body wasn’t in great condition either,” he says. “I’d had 11 operations on my left knee up to that stage. The body is kaput today. I’ve five compressed disks in my lower spine; they pop out every now and again. I could pick up a pen and not be able to walk for two weeks. Both Achilles’ heels are dodgy. My left knee flares up every time I walk on it.

“We were insured to a certain degree. I had six months to adjust – I was still paid for six months – and then after that, you’re literally on your own. It was horrific. I wasn’t prepared for it at all. It’s frightening. I know now there are policies in place. Hamish Adams of IRUPA does a lot of work with the players, but really, being honest, all you are is a number. You’re only as good as your last game.”

Adams, a Kiwi, qualified sports psychologist and former professional rugby player with Moseley, started as players’ services adviser for IRUPA, the Irish Rugby Union Players Association, in February 2008. He’s the first person to take up the job.

“There is a big transition to make,” he says about moving on from a professional rugby career. “All the literature suggests you need a good support network around yourself in terms of family, friends and expertise. You also need a project to move in to, ideally.

“Obviously the transition is easier to take if it comes on your own terms – if you decide to retire as opposed to being forced to retire through injury of your contract not being renewed. Perhaps you still had aspirations to do more in the game. Those factors can have a huge bearing on how easy or difficult the transition can be.

“There’s a period of adjustment. It takes time to accept that professional sport is over because you’re not mixing with the same people. Your lifestyle changes; your income will probably drop significantly.”

As well as preparing players practically and psychologically for retirement, he counsels them on education matters and offers an ear for personal and family dramas bubbling in the background.

“If a player isn’t happy off the pitch, he can’t perform on it,” he says. “Say if a player has split up with the girlfriend and he’s got personal issues that he needs to resolve obviously that’s going to have an impact on his on-field performance. If a player is becoming anxious over the fact that he’s getting to the last year or two of his own career and he’s wondering where he’s heading, that’s going to affect his performance as well.”

Not every player can fall back to the bosom of his province – like Anthony Foley at Munster or David Humphreys at Ulster – or to a club, as Bernard Jackman has done, where he brandishes a coach’s whistle at Clontarf. Victor Costello’s a pilot with Ryanair. Kieran Campbell, the former Ulster scrumhalf, is studying to be a school teacher. Munster stalwart John Kelly will, pending the right exam results, qualify as an accountant with KPMG in Cork in November. In June 2010, the IRFU offloaded 20 players. The year before, 41 players retired. “For example, of that 41,” says Adams, “18 were unemployed after July 1st. Another part of my role is in assisting those guys in terms of CV development, interview technique, business networking – making the right introductions and helping them move into roles in the business community. I’m happy to say we were able to help all of them who required assistance and none of them ended up unemployed for any significant amount of time.”

Adams admits to being “pretty strung out” with his workload, badly in need of a full-time cohort to help shoulder his roster of players. He ministers to 150 players as well as the academy bunch from the four provinces, which brings his congregation to over 200. His counterpart in England, Damian Hopley, can draw on more than double the funds per player than he can.

In the English Premiership, for example, by next year there will be one players services adviser for every two teams. In New Zealand and Australia, each of their Super 15 teams has one career and education adviser per team.

Australia’s Rugby Union Players Association programme has been in place since 2001. As its national player development manager, Rosemary Towner oversees a team of five regional players’ advisers. Regarding players’ retirement, she cites money problems and personal identity issues as the biggest challenges they have to face.

“Sometimes identity is the biggest loss,” she says. “If you have spent 15 years of your life introducing yourself as a professional footballer, and suddenly you aren’t that any more, what are you? Or the first time someone says ‘didn’t you used to be . . . ?’ or even worse “who are you?”

David Corkery

Occupation: Starting a new job in January; media work.

Clubs: Bristol, Munster.

Ireland caps: 27.

Position: Flanker.

Age: 38.

Career: 1995-2000.

“I was a guy who came out of school and didn’t go on to third-level education; I went to work straight away. It was something that played on my mind hugely. I would have had sleepless nights – what if? What if? Eventually “if” happened. I probably talked myself into it. I was forced out through injury in 2000.

“Declan Kidney was very, very good to me. He would have helped me as much as I asked him to help me. You got a letter from the union saying thanks for your service and best of luck in the future.

“Back then, there was nowhere to turn to. You were literally cut free and on your own. The following week there was someone else in your jersey. That’s the way they view professional sport. If it wasn’t for Niall Woods, IRUPA’s chief executive, who steps down in January, and Hamish Adams, there probably still would be nothing there.

“I was fortunate in that there was a development officer job available within the Irish rugby union so after quitting the game I did exactly what I knew and went back into the game. I spent four or five years in that job.

Then I went into my brother’s tiling business as an area manager, but with the way the building sector has gone, I’m out of it now. I start a new job in January, as a result of the experience gained from the tiling business.

“For the young guys coming into the game, my advice is not to have all your eggs in the one basket. The game now is viewed as a business.

“The higher you go, the less they’ll care about you because you’re being paid decent money to do it. It’s the same as any walk of life – if you’re a sales guy and you don’t make your sales, you’re gone. It’s the same in rugby. So you really have to be very selfish and get the most out of it that you can, and have a Plan B to fall back on.”

“We were insured to a certain degree. I had six months to adjust – I was still paid for six months – and then after that, you’re literally on your own. It was horrific. I wasn’t prepared for it at all.

Eric Miller

Occupation: Runs a golf fitness business; coaches rugby teams; does media work.

Clubs: Leicester Tigers, Ulster, Leinster.

Position: Number eight.

Ireland/British Irish Lions caps: 49.

Age: 35.

Career: 1995-2006.

“I felt I was compelled to move on. Being a rugby player is quite a cocooned lifestyle. You’re kind of out of the real world. Whether you’re in a team or out of a team, you’re just on this sort of conveyor belt. I’d been playing professionally for 11 years; I just felt I’d done everything I could do. I could have played for another three or four years but I think it was having an effect on my relationships. There wasn’t a balance there. I was consumed by my career. I just thought a change was needed.

“It’s very regimented living. I got tired of that, to be honest. It teaches you to be quite selfish in your life because of the nature of the game. Everything is about you – whether you’re eating right or getting over injuries or looking after Number One. I think I took that home with me at times and when it starts affecting your family life . . . over time I reflected on that and realised it wasn’t worth it to keep going.

“I was delighted to retire. It was like relief. It was kind of strange. I got married that summer. That was always the plan, from a year out. I had a two or three-month break. We got out of Ireland. We had our honeymoon, travelling around. My parents live abroad.

“So I had two or three months of getting away and forgetting about everything. I came back and knew what I wanted to do. I think that really helped me. I did certain courses. Knowing what I wanted to do six months out was key.

“The biggest challenge with the decision to retire was in not knowing 110 per cent the reason why I was doing it; I just knew in my gut I wanted to do it. I don’t think all the answers are there in front of you why you’re doing it. Once you move on you reflect – it’s either a good thing or a bad thing. A few people outside “the rugby family” were distressed, but apart from them everyone inside the game was understanding.”

John Kelly

Occupation: Trainee Accountant.

Club: Munster.

Ireland caps: 17.

Position: Centre/Winger.

Age: 36.

Career: 1997-2007.

"For the whole of 2007 I kept getting injured. The writing was on the wall so I retired at the end of an 18-month contract that December. For a whole year I felt very much out there on my own in that I was one of the few professional players at Munster in a long time that had retired and gone completely separate from Munster, but then a year or so later Anthony Horgan and Frankie Sheahan retired. Now myself, Frankie and Anthony meet up regularly for lunch and you have something in common with these guys. It is a tough time because you finish up something that you give your whole life over to. My wife might say to me sometimes over the years would you like to go for a walk and I'd be thinking, well, I can't go for a walk because it might affect me on Saturday. You're that focused on your career, on nutrition, everything is so focused towards the Saturday.

"For a while you're kind of lost. It's a massive part of your life. My parents, my sisters, my wife would have followed it for 10 years as well. You're thinking what do I do now? Even my situation I had planned fairly well.

"I'd studied accountancy exams. Within a couple of months I'd made contacts with people in KPMG. I'd sorted out – I think by March – that I'd be starting a training contract the following November 2008.

"Gaillimh retired around 2003, for example. Claw was around the same time. You'd be with these guys day to day and then you wouldn't see them that often; it's just weird, but as a player you're caught up with what you're doing. It's the easiest job in the world to set goals because your goal is to win trophies.

"You're so caught up in that so when guys move on, the team moves on without them. It's quite a selfish profession in that you just move on. It's like any organisation – when guys retire, there isn't a shrine in their office. The business moves on without them. It's exactly the same in Munster."

Chris Keane

Student: Assistant coach at Skerries.

Clubs: Connacht, Leinster.

Position: Scrumhalf.

Age: 32.

Career: 2001-2010.

"My folks were always encouraging me to stay on at college but I didn't because my focus was just on playing rugby, but towards the end, Hamish Adams – and of course my wife Sue-Ann – really encouraged me to prepare for other eventualities. Hamish helped me source a one-year bridging course in UCD to get into physiotherapy at the College of Surgeons.

I finished with Leinster in June. I got accepted for the physiotherapy course the year before. I was going to try and balance the two but was advised against it, that it would have been too much to juggle, and they were right – there's a lot of work involved in the physio course – so I deferred for a year.

"I had it in my head that retirement was coming – it's pretty obvious when lads around you are signing contracts for two or three years and you're not even getting approached – and I had mentally prepared myself but obviously every day you miss it. It's a huge transition from 10 years of going into a changing room with 30 lads and having the craic, training hard, obviously, and having that competitiveness every day, to sitting in a classroom.

I remember the first day in college in the first anatomy class I was in, it was so daunting – the amount of detail that was in one lecture on what you had to learn. But I think the fact of being a professional for so long has stood to me in a way. I treat the study as a job. One of the biggest differences between an amateur and a professional when it comes to playing rugby is the mental side of things. You're constantly thinking about how you can improve. You're constantly pushing yourself and trying to think positively. I did psychology work with Enda McNulty, the motivational guy for the Leinster squad, and it benefited me. The willpower it taught me has definitely helped with my studies."