‘ I’m not as strong as I used to be but I’ll take that over not being able to pick my kids up’ On why he walked away
After worrisome weeks in the world of Scottish rugby, former Edinburgh
THERE may have been a great end to the Six Nations for Scotland in Wales but rugby has also been peppered with its fair share of uncertainty – and ugliness – in recent weeks. The SRU last month announced a fresh round of pay cuts in light of the financial hit inflicted by coronavirus with players accepting a reduction in salaries for the second time in a year. Then Roy Laidlaw, the Scotland and Lions great, revealed he was suffering from dementia, likely the result of multiple concussions sustained during his career as a diminutive but tough- tackling scrum- half. Last Sunday, the Edinburgh winger George Taylor sustained a broken jaw, cheekbone and nose following a nasty tackle by the Scarlets forward Josh Helps.
Reminders all, that rugby can be a ruthless and unforgiving habitat. The pandemic has simply made jobs more uncertain in a sport that carries inherent risk simply by dint of its brutal nature. There’s little surprise at Michael Allen’s reply, then, when the former Edinburgh winger is asked whether he has any regrets about hanging up his boots and whether there is a chance of him making a return to the sport one day.
“None, absolutely none,” is the emphatic response.
It’s three- and- a- half years since Allen, then 26, was taken to a coffee shop one afternoon by Duncan Hodge, the erstwhile Edinburgh caretaker coach, to be told that a contract offer which had been on the table since the previous autumn was now in the shredder. At first, Allen’s world crashed around him. His wife Eireann, an anaesthetist at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, was settled in her job, the couple had their first child on the way and they were in love with the city.
After 79 games for Ulster and Edinburgh, there was interest from clubs in England and France’s second tier but the thought of grifting for a piecemeal living held little appeal to Allen. Nevertheless, Eireann said she was happy to move anywhere. Her husband, though, had other ideas.
“I was in bits but she said ‘ right, well, where will we go? What club? We’ll start searching now’. It was my call, though. I didn’t have it in me to move away and try to play here, there. I had one contract offer from the Championship in England and I said no straight away, it just wasn’t financially viable for us as a family to live off that kind of salary. I got a text from my agency and they said they had interest from a club in France but I said ‘ I’m not going for it. I’m finishing up, I’m done.’”
A chat with Pamela Gilpin, the player development manager at Ulster, and a meeting with former teammate Paul Rowley convinced Allen that there might just be a life after sport. Rowley had been on a course with St James’ Place Academy, a prestigious wealth management business and was working as a financial advisor in Edinburgh.
Allen – who says he was
“a good pupil who didn’t get into trouble but just didn’t study hard enough” at school – decided to follow Rowley’s lead and sat two exams as he saw out the final months of his contract at Edinburgh.
“My cv literally said ‘ Methodist College Belfast,
[ it had] my A levels [ on it], Edinburgh Rugby and Ulster Rugby and that was it. [ SJP] weren’t saying ‘ we need someone that has got years of experience in financial advice or someone who has gone to university or who has got straight As in their exams at school’.
“They took me from being a rugby player, wiped the slate completely clean and six months later I was a fully qualified financial advisor.”
Now a few weeks shy of 30, and with the second of two children due in February, Allen says rugby plays a peripheral part in his life these days. He spent a season at Watsonians but a concussion early on left him reflecting on how lucky he had been throughout his career in comparison to others.
“My body was in good shape,” he says. “I’d had two operations on my shoulder which is not that uncommon in the sport. I did have three or four knockouts in my career, completely sparked out. I don’t think that played on my mind but I don’t think I could have gone through another period of being knocked out and having that sickly feeling. It actually happened when I was playing for Watsonians. It was the third match of the season – it was a knee to the jaw, [ I was] completely gone – and I didn’t feel okay for nine or 10 weeks. I couldn’t shift the headache, if I walked quickly to catch the bus my head was spinning. I was going into St James’ Place to do my studying, I was dealing with a brand new baby, all of this contributed to me having prolonged symptoms. There are big names who have had to retire recently because of head knocks – Dave Denton is obviously the big one and Matty Scott, who’s a good pal of mine. A best pal of mine who I went to school with is down playing at Worcester, Niall Annett. He came back after doing his ACL, then got a head knock and couldn’t play for about 10 months and you kind of go ‘ Christ, I’m really, really glad I don’t have any injury potential like that any more.”
HE says this at the end of a week in which Taylor is coming to terms with the horrific injuries he sustained as a result of his sickening collision with Helps. The second row was given a fiveweek suspension for his headfirst tackle on the Edinburgh winger. The offence carries a 10- week penalty but it was reduced due to mitigating circumstances, notably because
Helps apologised afterwards.
Having watched the highlights, Allen says he doesn’t believe pre- meditation played a part.
“Did [ Helps] want to put a big shot in on a winger to be physical because he’s a bigger bloke? Yeah, absolutely, that’s the world over. I don’t think it was premeditated. He is a big man, tall, not as mobile as a winger and the winger is not the same height as him. The tackle height of the guy coming in is wrong but he doesn’t have time to correct it. If you look at that tackle and look back to 2011, 12, 13, those tackles would have been missed. Go back further than that and they would have just played on.”
He doesn’t watch the sport in the way that he used to but that’s because he has lots more to occupy him. He’ll still sit in the pub with a couple of mates for a Six Nations Super Saturday, but he knows now there is life on the other side of elite sport, Murrayfield and Ravenhill.
“We’re expecting another kid in February,” he says, noting that he is in a happy place since retiring. “I’m more relaxed. I was quite regimented. I’ve lost a pile of weight and I’m not as strong now as I used to be but, so what? I’ll take that over trying to plug out a rugby career and being 32, 33 with multiple fractures and not being able to lift my kids up.”