This is the time of the year for retirements. At the end of the intercounty season, players start to wonder whether they want to go back for the following year. Two distinguished football servants, Limerick’s Iain Corbett and Darren Hughes of Monaghan, have called it a day in the past couple of weeks. Corbett played 14 seasons and Hughes went on for 19.
What are the challenges in disengaging from the high-intensity involvement of intercounty competition?
Coming towards the end of his career, Philly McMahon wanted to mark David Clifford. It was the first league match of 2020, Dublin’s opening fixture as six-in-a-row All-Ireland champions. He knew Dessie Farrell and the management would take a sceptical view, but McMahon had his reasons.
“I felt I could challenge him in a way that no other Dublin back could. I’m sure the management team were going, ‘we don’t think you’re able for it’. That’s the sense I would have got.
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“Even if he scored 1-5 on me that day, I would have been able to analyse what he’d done or what I had done on him and brought that back to the group. I’m not saying other players couldn’t do that, but they wouldn’t have done it to the experience that I would have done it to.”
That sense of being able to assist the collective even when personal performance levels were flagging was a common theme in the Dublin dressingroom. McMahon had watched others reach the outer limits of their usefulness and dedicate a final season to helping the team.
It was the late Shane O’Hanlon, then a selector, who persuaded him to give it one last shot.
“He was the one that definitely influenced me to go back in 2021 because he was able to say to me, ‘I think you can make a massive difference this year for us, in a different way’. That was crucial for me.”
Not all players are inclined to do a year on an intercounty panel pro bono, but not everyone has had McMahon’s career with eight All-Irelands, two All Stars, a Footballer of the Year nomination and post-retirement media options.
He also acknowledged in his retirement statement at the end of 2021 that such a garlanded football career had been a platform for both his business and philanthropic work. Retirement is different for players without a bagful of medals or a clear direction once football is over.
McMahon has come across peers in that position.
“I definitely would have had conversations with ex-players and they would have struggled a lot,” he said. “I would have done my own counselling in a weird way when I was writing columns. So, the punditry was my counselling.
“It was me verbalising what I was thinking or what I was probably locking in and internalising or suppressing to an extent. So, for me, that was a massive help with my transition, but not everybody has a chance to do that.”
Jennie Rogers is the player development manager of the Gaelic Players Association (GPA) and she confirms that the transition from sporting celebrity can be challenging.
“There’s a lot of different factors. Circumstances are probably a key thing in terms of whether the retirement is due to injury or whether it’s on their own terms and their own choice,” she said.
There is also the brutal reality for some, that they will never be as good at anything in their life again. Rogers says counselling encourages former players to look at all the things their careers have enabled them to do.
“I think what a lot of them maybe don’t recognise is by being an intercounty player and especially if somebody has had a long career – 10-plus years – there are a number of skills that they’ve developed that are transferable to other areas of their lives. Like discipline, resilience, the commitment, the motivation that they have, their teamwork skills.”
McMahon remembers how, in his final year, some of the things he used to do without hesitation became problems. “Teak-tough defending. By the end I was getting challenged on being too ‘teak-tough’ and that’s a dynamic you haven’t prepared for – and that can be difficult.”
The GPA runs courses for players who have retired plus those who are just thinking about it. It is part of an overall plan to help players focus on a future life off the field as well as the demanding present on it.
“We have our player development programme, BEO360,” says Rogers. “There is a pillar in that that’s specifically about transition, and that’s focused on helping players from the beginning of their intercounty career to look at their lives outside the sport so that they’re not putting all their eggs into one basket.”
Striking a balance isn’t easy, according to McMahon’s recollections. “I think football came first and life came second. That’s the way it was. I had a sleep monitor before those watches came along!”
Not that he has any regrets.
“Without the group and the management teams that we worked with and the success we got, I wouldn’t have been able to get to a point where I could use my profile to write a book around my brother and to try to influence people that were on the same pathway.
“Or the documentaries I’ve done, or the charity I’ve set up. Everything happens for a reason in my head, and I wouldn’t have changed anything.”
♦ Any players thinking about retirement or experiencing problems with it can contact the GPA support lines on 1800 989285 (RoI) or 0800 0445059 (NI). Or text 50808 (RoI) and 85258 (NI).
