When call to punch out comes too late
Not every sportsman or woman gets to decide when they should retire, for most that decision is taken out of their hands.
But for those that do it’s a fine balance of making sure they pull the pin before they’re past their best and damage their legacy, but also don’t leave any trophies or great wins on the table.
The 42-year-old Tom Brady recently decided that he will play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next season, after 20 years with the New England Patriots. It’s sure to end in tears.
David Long looks at some sporting stars who came second in a battle against father time.
Then in part two of this series he examines sports stars who defied the odds by bouncing back after being being written off, then in the final part he looks at those who pulled the pin early.
Muhammad Ali – Boxing. Age retired : 40 When he was at his peak Ali floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, but at the end of his career he was already showing signs of Parkinson’s disease. His penultimate fight, to Larry Holmes is one of the saddest moments of all time in sport and actor
Sylvester
Stallone, who was ringside, said that it was like watching an autopsy on a man who is still alive. Depressingly, he had one more fight, losing to Trevor Berbick in 10 rounds and it’s believed he took 200,000 punches over his career. Ali was the greatest sports star of the 20th century, but unfortunately, there’s no person who deserves to top this list more than Ali.
Martin Crowe – Cricket. Age retired: 49 New Zealand’s greatest ever batsman initially retired at the age of 33 because of knee problems, but in 2011 then aged 49 he tried to make it back to firstclass cricket.
He wanted to score 392 more runs to get to 20,000, so strapped on the pads again for Cornwall Cricket Club to get time in the middle and show that he was ready for a return to the first-class game. However, his comeback lasted all of three balls, before picking up a thigh injury. ‘‘I said from the start it would end in tears with an injury,’’ Crowe admitted afterwards.
George Best – Football. Age retired: 37 In the 1960s George Best was as big as the Beatles and was one of the most skilful players to ever play the game. But there was another side to Best which was perfectly summed up when he once said of his career: ‘‘I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars – the rest I just squandered." He left Manchester United in 1974 and bumped around a few random clubs, before having the last good season of his career with Fulham in
1976-77. Out of shape and battling alcoholism,
Best then went on to play for clubs in USA,
Scotland and Hong Kong before finally finishing with the Brisbane Lions in 1983. Sadly, when the football stopped, the drinking didn’t and Best passed away at the age of
59.
Jonah Lomu – Rugby. Age retired:
34 No doubt Jonah Lomu did more to expose rugby to people around the world than any other and his try against England at the
1995 World Cup is etched on the memory of every fan of the game. But what Lomu hid for most of his career was his kidney problems and in his final year in the All Blacks it was apparent that his best days were already behind him, at the age of 27. But his love of the game never diminished and he struggled on, even after having a kidney transplant. In his season with North Harbour in 2006 he was slow, didn’t have a sidestep and was dropped to the reserves. He eventually finished up playing for third division French club Marseille Vitrolles, a shadow of the player he once was.
Ali Lauiti’iti – League Age retired:
36 Ali Lauiti’iti became an instant star from when he made his debut for the Warriors in 1998 as a 19-year-old and would go on to be one of the club’s key players for the next five years. He enjoyed even greater success for
Leeds in the Super
League between
2004 and 2011, but by the time he moved onto
Wakefield Trinity in
2012 he was already starting to slow down.
However, in 2016 Lauiti’iti signed with the Warriors again, hoping to make it back into the NRL. But even when the club went through an injury crisis, Lauiti’iti never got close to a call up.
Michael Jordan – Basketball. Age retired: 40 Picture Michael Jordan in your mind and he’s be wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey. The greatest basketball player of all time is intrinsically linked with the Bull’s dynasty in the
1990s. But as well as spending a year playing minor league baseball for
Birmingham Barons in 1994, he also decided to come out of retirement (for a third time) at the age of 38 to play for the struggling Washington Wizards. While Jordan averaged 20 points a game in his final year, to see him play for a team that twice finished the season with a 37-45 record slightly tarnished his legacy.
Maria Sharapova – Tennis. Age retired: 32 She won Wimbledon at the age of 17 and was No 1 in the world a year later. It should have been the start of a Serena Williams like career for the Russian, but she won just four more grand slam titles and had her legacy tarnished by a
15-month ban for doping in 2016. While she was only 29 when she started playing again, she was never the same player as before, winning just one tournament. Sharapova cut a lonely figure last year, she had isolated herself from the rest of the tennis community, was plagued by shoulder problems and her serve was no longer a weapon. When she lost in the first round of this year’s
Australian Open, her final tournament, her ranking was down to 145 in the world and it never really came as a surprise when she realised that it was all over for her.
Nigel Mansell – Motor racing. Age retired: 41 In 1992 Nigel Mansell became the first British driver to win the Formula One championship in 16 years when he triumphed in 1992 and the next year he was crowned the Indy Car championship. At 39, Mansell could have retired at the top, but instead decided to make a return to
Formula One. He won the Australia Grand
Prix in 1994, which at that time was the final race of the season and the following year moved from Williams to McLaren. But embarrassingly he was too fat to fit into the car for the first two races of the season. He was able to drive in a modified car for the following two races, but after disappointing places finally called it quits.
Brett Favre – NFL. Age retired: 40 Tom Brady could learn a lot from what happened to the Green Bay Packers icon. He talked about retirement in 2006, but played on in 2007. It was expected that this was to be his last and the Packers were ready to move on with Aaron Rodgers and in March 2008
Favre announced his retirement.
However, he then did a backflip and wanted to carry on.
After a messy split with the Packers, who he’d been with for 16 years, he played for the Jets in 2008 and said he was going to retire after that. Once more he changed his mind and went to the Vikings for 2009. In the first year with them he played well, but 2010 was a disaster, throwing just 11 touch downs and 19 interceptions. By then he at last got the message.
Sugar Ray Leonard – Boxing. Age retired: 40 Now some on this list retired three times before finally stopping for good. Sugar Ray Leonard did it four times before finally admitting his glittering career was over. There was a 14-year gap between his first retirement and his final one and even after losing that last fight, to He´ctor
Camacho, he spoke about getting in the ring again. Leonard won world titles at five different weight divisions and was one of the stylish boxers of all time. However, he didn’t know when enough was enough.