The inspirational story of back from the injury that
THE Journey song Don’t Stop Believin’ didn’t come on the radio and miraculously inspire Eli Walker when the going got tough after his enforced retirement from rugby.
Stuff like that may happen in films, but this was real life, where shortcuts out of adversity, backed by uplifting music, tend to be in short supply.
But even when an entire regiment of negative voices in his head were urging him to switch off the alarm clock and hurl it away as daylight streamed into his bedroom every morning, the former Wales and Ospreys wing still did the necessary and hauled himself out of bed to face the day.
It wasn’t easy.
“I can look back now and say it was the hardest time of my life,” says Walker.
“I had a one-year-old child as a single parent having split with my partner; I had a mortgage to pay and I didn’t have any income.
“It was a ridiculously difficult situation that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
“Some days I’d wake and think for a split-second: ‘I’m not going into work, I’m not going to do this and I’m not going to do that’.
“I’d think of hiding away.
“But rugby moulds you and it was still in my head that I needed to get up and make the effort.
“I feel lucky to have been part of such a competitive and strict environment, because it does stand you in good stead.”
NO-MAN’S LAND AND ALL THAT
Walker has come a long way since. We did this interview on the eve of his picking up a master’s degree from Cardiff Met University. He has also launched his own construction company, Walker Blake Limited, helped by business partner Louise O’Halloran, of the Juno Moneta Group, head sponsors at the Scarlets.
There is now light at the end of the tunnel, and it isn’t an onrushing train. But only Walker knows how he has managed to turn his situation around.
Fate turned against him when handing the one-cap international a back injury that was never going to shrugged off after a good night’s sleep. It soon became obvious he was going to struggle to return to rugby. It was 2017 and he was just 24.
Potentially, he was up the creek with no paddle within easy reach.
He had dreamed of playing rugby since he was a child. There was no Plan B, just the sportsman’s hope that there would be a career in his chosen profession through to his mid-30s, with plenty of time to think about tomorrow.
But tomorrow had been brought forward, with bells on.
“It was a strange time,” says Walker. “A while before it was confirmed, I had an idea I might have to retire.
“In that period, before I met Louise and launched my business, I was in no-man’s land.
“I was injured, I had split with my partner and I knew I needed to do everything I could to find a way forward for the rest of my life.
“It could have gone one of two ways. Definitely.
“I went without a salary for more than a year and you do go into panic mode.
“You do think: ‘How am I going to pay my mortgage and look after my little one?’”
Walker had negotiated an amicable 50-50 access arrangement over daughter Blake with his former partner, meaning he had to keep plenty of time free in his diary -- it not being easy to prepare a baby’s feed or offer yourself as a ready source of amusement and guidance for a toddler while ploughing your way through the latest research for a master’s degree.
“You just have to divide up your time,” says Walker.
“I had to cram work, life and my studies into the half of the week that I didn’t have Blake.
“It’s an understatement to say the balance of my life wasn’t the greatest, but slowly but surely I started to get somewhere.
“The hardest part was having to graft without knowing what was going to happen. Normally you have a goal. But I just felt I was working hard without any certainty about what I’d end up with.
“It took more than a year to come out of the that fog.”
WALKER THE PLAYER
How good could Walker have been as a rugby player?
We will never definitively know, but those fortunate to have been at the Liberty Stadium on December 15, 2012, might be tempted to say he could have been right up there among the very best. That day, the Ospreys played Toulouse and their left wing positively terrorised the European aristocrats.
Sitting alongside him in the post-match press conference, Ospreys assistant coach Gruff Rees said: “He has the attributes to do damage to any team in the world.”
For the avoidance of doubt, Rees isn’t a hype, hype, hooray type of coach. For him to get excited, the effort needs to be special. Against Toulouse, Walker came up with an extraordinary display.
The following European round Walker dished out similar treatment to Leicester Tigers. It was some of the most electrifying wing play by a Welsh player this decade.
But the good times were punctuated by appalling luck with injuries.
AND SO TO BUSINESS...
Now all that’s a thing of the past.
His venture into the business world owed much to O’Halloran, a businesswoman with a winning touch.
“I was rehabbing at the Ospreys, trying to come back from a lowerback injury when Louise came in to talk to us about investment opportunities,” says Walker.
“My ears pricked up because I knew I didn’t have long left on my contract. The rehab wasn’t going the way I wanted it to. I just thought it might be a good opportunity for me to invest.
“The idea was we’d buy properties at auction and those properties would then be completely renovated, pushing the value up. Then it’s up to you whether you want to flip the property or keep it as part of your portfolio.
“So I did a couple with her and one day asked a question about how the construction side of things was handled. She replied: ‘We just go out and get quotes’.
“I knew a lot of plumbers, plasterers and so on, so I asked why we couldn’t do it internally, and she said: ‘That’s the attitude we are looking for. We’ll do it ourselves and start our own construction business’.
“That’s how Walker Blake was formed.”
DYSLEXIA AND A MASTER’S DEGREE
His master’s degree was in strength and conditioning.
The problem was he had battled dyslexia throughout his life. Reading and writing at master’s degree level was something a 13-year-old Eli Walker would never have contemplated. It was the kind of stuff done by others.
“Being dyslexic, I had always found academic work difficult,” he says.
“But there was no getting away from it: the course involved a lot of essay writing and if I was going to get anywhere I had to deal with it.
“I did my dissertation on injury in high-level performance sprinting in a rugby environment.
“I hadn’t put together an essay since I was 15, so it was hard, but gradually I got to grips with it.
“Given my dyslexia and how long I’d been out of education for, it means a lot to have picked up a degree.
“I’d say it’s one of my biggest achievements, alongside my Wales cap.”