Transcript

CLARKE CARLISLE

The hardest aspect of that transition is the total loss of identity. The hardest statements to hear are didn't you used to be Clarke Carlisle? Well, no. I still am. I'm still here. As strong and resolute as you try and be in that next role, to all intents and purposes, for everyone else, it will never be as good as. And that's hard to shoulder every day.

OLLIE PHILLIPS

It's just that the transition's so different. Everything, from the adulation, the time, the feeling you have because you're fit and healthy, the money. All of it suddenly just stops, moving away from that, and accepting that that's kind of all over is really, really hard. Going from an environment that was full of so many emotional highs, and then going to an environment that I couldn't really resonate with. It didn't really seem familiar to me.

CLARKE CARLISLE

The sad fact of it is is that a cut short career is what, cut short to seven years? Cut short to seven years from what? 10? This is a very short, finite career.

LUKE HARVEY

A lot of people hit a really big low. You've got to be positive about a second career. When you're 30, you've still got-- you're only halfway through your working life.

MATT MACHAN

Playing cricket is most people's dreams from a little boy. That can get cut at any moment, and that is probably the toughest pill to swallow. But at the same time, the PCA, as I said before, are an amazing sounding board. And the more you can invest in yourself whilst you're playing, it's only going to make the transition, whether you retire early, or at the end of your career, a lot easier to handle, and the transition will be smoother.

ALEX SCOTT

That day when I had to make the announcement, it was so hard, because I had been Alex Scott, the footballer, for so long, and it is-- It's a big part of your identity and what you've known and what you describe yourself as to other people, I suppose. It was hard, but what I would say is don't wait till that last day. Put things in place. You don't want to get to that end day, then sit there and think, what am I going to do with my life? So it is signing up for a course, or going to speak to people at the PFA, just to get some advice, just get those wheels in motion sooner rather than later.