Will boxing keep Rooney from falling into football’s crushing void?

LOUIE McCarthy-Scarsbrook has possibly the most unlikely name for a rugby league player but he was very good at what he did. During a 17-year career at the top of his profession the St Helens prop forward won five Super League Grand Finals and played for England. And now he is training to be a fireman.

Writing in his column for Forty20 magazine this month, McCarthy-Scarsbrook touches on the way his life works since his retirement at the end of last season.

‘It’s nice having a couple of Friday pints after a hard week’s graft,’ said the 38-year-old.

‘On my weekends I am catching up on the football on my phone while at the bowling alley with the kids.’

This is called the real world and it is a place in which many sportsmen and women have to live once the lights are turned off on their careers. Some cope but many others do not. Not all professional sports provide lifetime financial security in the way that football does. Regardless, the transition is always the hardest bit. They all say it.

And I couldn’t help but think about that when I saw the Daily Mirror report on Wednesday that Wayne Rooney is considering a couple of YouTube boxing bouts.

Rooney, also 38, has not stopped moving since he played his last game for Derby County in November 2020. Manager at Derby, manager at DC United in Washington and then, until he was sacked on January 2, manager at Birmingham City.

In that three- year period Rooney (right) was without work for about 22 days.

And then, suddenly, the carousel stops and he, just like everybody else in his position, has to get off. The impact can be crushing and there is no shortage of struggling former professionals willing to tell the tale.

Last year, I went for a walk in the Peak District with one of my favourite people in football, former Nottingham Forest goalkeeper Mark Crossley.

Crossley played under Brian Clough and does a brilliant impression of the great man. His after- dinner shtick is marvellously funny. But life after playing and coaching left him flat on his back. ‘I had done more than 30 non- stop years and thought I was ready for a break,’ Crossley told me.

‘But when it came and all my life’s structure was taken away I hadn’t a clue how to handle it.

‘ I was just locked in the bedroom. Absolutely lost.’

Crossley dragged himself out of his funk by working and by walking. Every day he goes out with his dog Roxy from his home near Barnsley.

Along with other footballers who have suffered similarly — such as former Liverpool goalkeeper Chris Kirkland and ex-Hull City forward Dean Windass — Crossley now walks to raise money for charity. They called their group ‘ Walking’s Brilliant’ and for them it has been simply because it has saved them.

For many others, it takes longer and is harder and more complicated.

There are only so many coaching jobs, only so many openings in the media. Divorce rates among retired footballers are astonishingly high. The PFA do their bit to try to prepare their players, and the PlayOn venture launched in 2017 by former Manchester United and Arsenal defender Viv Anderson was one of several to endeavour to provide a route to fulfilment after a life in football had ground to a halt.

Still, though, there is no solution to the problem and it seems to me that the more money swills around the professional game, especially at the very top, the harder it becomes to bridge the yawning gap between elite sport and the humdrum nature of life on the outside.

Many of us would love not to have to work. To retire at 40 would represent some kind of nirvana to many.

But that’s not the way the mind works. Everybody needs stimulation. Everyone needs a purpose. If Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook finds his in the Merseyside fire service, that’s a wonderful thing. And if Rooney finds his in the boxing ring while he hunts his next coaching opportunity then that’s fine too. But I can’t help but wonder about that one.

Victoria Pendleton, the GB Olympic cyclist, has raced horses and attempted to climb Everest since she stopped competing. Sir Bradley Wiggins tried rowing. Rio Ferdinand boxed. So did Andrew Flintoff. Chasing that high. Looking for purpose.

Rugby league is a minority sport in this country. Only the marquee players earn well and McCarthy-Scarsbrook, for all his medals and achievements, was not one of them.

He has not had that far to fall and would appear to have landed well.

For footballers it sometimes takes longer. Indeed, I recall a chat with a manager in his mid- 60s who had just taken another hiding-to-nothing job during the Covid pandemic.

‘ Why have you done it?’ I asked him.

‘I just needed to get out of the house,’ he said.