Burns' Eye View

Old Father Time

By Neil Burns on August 31st, 2010

Time stands still for no man.

One can argue that the time factor is the only apsect of life where man is equal.

No matter who you are, how rich one is, or how much influence one has in society, the challenge of dealing with the impact of ageing, and facing one’s own mortality as a player and man, is something which sportsperson faces.

As a retired sportsman, I know how difficult it can be to come to terms with life after professional sport. Being without the sense of purpose to train and practice one’s lifelong habits in pursuit of sporting excellence, can impact considerably on one’s day to day life. The desire to become a sportsman from a tender age creates a discipline and a foucs in a person’s life, which means that when this focus disappears, it can be very unbalancing, and can cause turmoil in a man’s life.

Essentially, a sportsperson goes through a grieving process for what they had, or what they promised to achieve, but never accomplished. If there is a sense of unfulfilment, such as when injury prematurely ends a promising career, the pain can affect a person for a very long time. Some turn to alcohol to numb the emotional pain, but without access to proper support to work through the difficulty, it can be a precarious time in an individual’s life.

The challenge after playing top sport, is to find meaning in other activities, and to pursue the activity of physical training as an instrument to enhance one’s health, emotional well-being, and levels of self-respect.

Tragically, over 100 former First-Class Cricketers have been unable to face the ongoing challenge of life, and decided to take their own lives. Cricket historian David Frith’s chilling book, ‘Silence of the Heart’, is about the individuals who ended their lives prematurely, and is a fascinating insight into the characters, and their individual circumstances, which led to the sad deaths.

Tomorrow is the birthday of one of the most recent and high profile examples, the late David ‘Bluey’ Bairstow, former Yorkshire and England wicket-keeper, who would have been 59, but for his untimely passing in 1998. I went to ‘Bluey’s’ memorial service at York with my great friend Paul Johnson from Nottinghamshire, and found it a very very sad experience. Part of Bluey’s legacy to Yorkshire Cricket is that his youngest son, Jonny, continues to show great promise in Yorkshire’s first team and is carrying on the family tradition of wicket-keeping and batting. I also played golf recently with Bluey’s eldest son, Andrew. We were both guests at our close mutual friend Paul Sampson’s wedding in Spain to the beautiful Kirsty Gallacher. Andrew also played First-Class Cricket for Derbyshire and now works in the sports clothing business for the Canterbury brand, and like his father before him, is a competitive, sociable, and all-round good guy. Our round of golf (befitting of the Gallacher family) before the wedding at Arcos Gardens, near Jerez, enabled us to talk about his Dad, and how life after sport can present so many different challenges to one’s temperament. I still find it very sad that ‘Bluey’ is no longer with us and able to enjoy the company of his family, especially his two fine sons.

One of my contemporaries from England Schools Coaching courses and regional teams, Danny Kelleher from Kent, also took his own life after a promising career failed to deliver against his own expectations. A short trial period with Surrey offered some hope shortly after his Kent career, but within a couple of years I and his former team-mates joined his family and friends at a funeral service to commemorate his relatively short life. It seemed that after Cricket, Danny was unable to find a purpose in his life to sustain him. Thankfully, the Professional Cricketers Association (PCA) has now put in place a confidential helpline for cricketers in distress.

Coaching, and developing others, enables a sportsperson to have a vehicle for sharing the accumulated wisdom and experience of one’s past, but for many, life after sport can be a chastening experience.

Sport never likes to see its’ greats reduced to shadows of their former selves, and prefers to remember its famous protagonists at the peak of their powers.

Most recently sport has lost former World Snooker Champion, Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins, (who was known as ‘The People’s Champion’),  to ‘the great pavilion in the sky’ after the ravages of cancer reduced him to a tiny frail man. The latter stages of his life saw him living in poverty (as he began his life), and representeda sad end to a world famous sportsman’s life. A BBC TV documentary is due to be screened tomorrow on Higgins’ rise and fall. It promises to be a harrowing tale of the ups and downs of a life in top sport.

Higgins delighted and frustrated snooker fans in equal measure with his mercurial talent. In doing so, he helped put snooker in the forefront of the sporting public’s consciousness, making it a television spectacle in the 1970′s and 80′s, as well as inspiring the likes of Jimmy White and Ronnie O’Sullivan to take up the sport and add to its glamour and glorious uncertainty.

Last week one of sport’s most famous characters passed on too. Bobby Thomson, the man who hit an epic home run with the so-called ‘shot heard round the world’, for New York Giants against the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 3rd 1951,  died at the age of 86. Thomson achieved legendary status in sport, with his home run to win ‘the pennant’ and claim baseball’s iconic moment in the history of the sport. Bobby Thomson’s remarkable strike snatched victory from the jaws of defeat for his team and left the player with an indelible memory:

“I can remember feeling as if time was just frozen,” Thomson once said. “It was a delirious, delicious moment.”

Today, it was announced that the only remaining survivor of the first-ever Football World Cup Final, when Argentina lost 4-2 to hosts Uruguay in 1930, had died at the ripe old age of 100. Argentina’s Francisco Varallo, who scored 194 goals for his club side Boca Juniors was known as ‘Canocito’ ( Little Cannon) for his immensely powerful shot. In a recent interview on FIFA.com to celebrate his 100th birthday, Varallo said:

 ’I achieved a lot of nice things in my career. I represented the national team and was Boca’s record goalscorer. However, in my life I’ve never felt such a bitter pain as losing that World Cup final against Uruguay in 1930. How I cried that day. Even now when I look back it still makes me angry.”

For me, these quotes illustrate how significant one’s sporting experiences can be in one’s life, and the long-term effect some of them have on one’s psyche.

In my many hours spent in conversation with some of the legends of sport I have had the privilege of spending time with, it is fascinating for me to see how retired people come alive when I have been able to tap into their historical perspectives of players or events. Their eyes seem to light up and their body language changes as if they have transported by tardis back to the time and place of the experience. To witness the recall of some of these people, with regard to the detail into historical parts of their life, is an amazing experience for the listener too.

Recently, I met up with former Surrey Captain, Cricket Manager and President Mickey Stewart, who was also England’s first-ever Cricket Manager and led England into two consecutive World Cup Finals (1987 & 1992). I was interested in Mickey’s perspective on modern coaching, and asking him about the elements of sport from yesteryear which he felt we should never lose sight of, if we want to protect the future of sport, especially the games we love, which in this particular instance is football and cricket - passions we both share.

Mickey was recalling how he would go to Lord’s just to watch the legendary Denis Compton and Sir Len Hutton practise in the nets on The Nursery Ground. His face lit up and he sounded almost like a little boy as he spoke about how he got up close and personal to his heroes just to see how they moved their feet and what typwe of equipment they used, in the hope that he would discover more about why they were the greatest of their era. He then said how he couldn’t wait to get home in the evening and go out and practise what he had seen in the hope that one dya he could become ‘a  real player’ himself.

One of the most significant meetings in my sporting life took place with Sir Alec Bedser in 2005, and one which was kindly set up by Mickey himself. Sir Alec shared some wonderful wisdom with Dr Ken Jennings, Dr Ken West and myself at his family home in Woking where he and twin brother had helped their father build the house as young boys, before living the remainder of their lives in the same house. The recall of his role in helping his father build the house and his duels with Sir Donald Bradman was a great privilege for me to be able to listen to. 

At the Dunhill Links at St Andrews in 2007, Steve Waugh kindly introduced me to Sir Bobby Charlton, and his charming wife Norma, one evening. The following day I happened to bump into Sir Bobby at breakfast, and we engaged in conversation about Manchester United’s fixture that day against Wigan. He was surprisingly nervous about the match, and it turned out that the source of his nervousness was the injury and probable unavailablility of Paul Scholes to play that day.

He waxed lyrical about Scholes as a player, and as a man. Sir Bobby said it was as if Scholes was born into the wrong era, and commented that he would have fitted in perfectly amongst his own contemporaries.

When he said this, I took advantage of the opportunity to ask Sir Bobby about the legendary Duncan Edwards, who my father told me was a superb player, and saw him play in his last match in England against Arsenal at Highbury before the disaster of the Munich Air Crash which decimated Manchester United’s Busby Babes on 6th March 1958. Sir Bobby shook his head in disbelief about the tragedy of Duncan Edwards and in doing so, brought alive some vivid memories about a player the football world held in great esteem. With his understated nature and his rich historical perspective, when Sir Bobby talks in reverential tones about a player, you know he must be something special. It was an incredible experience to be part of such a conversation, and witness Sir Bobby’s emotion about a player who he last played with, and saw, fifty years ago.

With increased knowledge about diet, supplements and training methods, it is no surprise to see some of modern sport’s leading players continue to excel when they reach the veteran stage. Surrey’s Mark Ramprakash continues to score runs for fun while Manchester United’s Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs have been at the forefront of their team’s successful start to the new football season.