Sport can be cruel at times. Not every hero gets the fairytale ending that they deserve. Not all greats get to sign off with a trophy, and some players don't even get to sign off at all.
Former Galway hurler Tony Og Regan is one of those players. Regan's inter-county career ended abruptly in 2013 when he was cut from the panel. That was it, over. Regan wasn't ready to stop playing, but after ten years of inter-county hurling it was all over.
Since then, he's enrolled in a master's degree in sports and exercise psychology with a focus on how GAA players cope after ending their inter-county careers. Speaking to the Sunday Times, Regan's accounts of several other retired players he spoke to is absolutely harrowing:
The lads who were dropped prematurely or the decision was taken out of their hands generally took longer. It was like something had died inside them. There’s a bitterness there. In some cases it took players up to two or three years to fully recover and those are lost years.
In an era where the stigma around depression is being challenged, these sort of experiences from retired players is heartbreaking to hear. Losing three years of your life isn't like losing time of your career because of an injury. That shouldn't be happening.
According to Regan, it's different when professional players retire because they usually know when it's time to end. They don't have the same attachment because of how the game means to GAA players. The amateur ethos means that players bend themselves backwards for their counties. How are they meant to react when a career ends just like that?
There’s no exit strategy for players whose career is over. A lot of inter-county players just get handed a letter after 10 or 11 years. No real acknowledgement of the contribution they made to the game within the county and to young people’s lives along the way. More needs to be done to show gratitude to those players.
You’ve a way of life there for 10 years where you’re told what time you’re training at and you’re told what’s on every weekend for 30 or 40 weeks of the year and you work the rest of your life around that. Next thing that’s gone and you’ve got 25 or 30 free hours a week that you didn’t have before. Some fellas get into drinking or gambling, looking for the kind of rush they had when they were playing.
It's hard to argue that things are bad, and while you hear about episodes of depression for retired professional players - Regan's accounts of these forcefully retired GAA players are harrowing.
Things don't look so bleak for Regan. The master's degree has set his life on a new path. He's already worked with some Waterford hurlers on an individual basis, and will be working with some of Galway's inter-county teams.
[Sunday Times]
See Also: 'That's What Real Courage Is' - Waterfrd Manager Derek McGrath On Maurice Shanahan's Battle With Depression
Picture credit: David Maher / SPORTSFILE
