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The athlete’s journey: transitions through sport
The athlete’s journey: transitions through sport

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2.1 How athletic identity affects responses to transitions

Identity has a significant impact on the way athletes experience transition. As you learned in Activity 2, those with a high level of athletic identity may have more difficulty adjusting to transitions, in particular to unplanned (non-normative) experiences (Cosh et al., 2015). In the next activity you will hear first-hand about the impact an unplanned transition can have on athletic identity.

Activity 3 A changing stage: from football to Dr Who

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

Listen to the short audio excerpt below from the BBC’s Desert Island Discs in which Matt Smith talks about his experience as a young footballer with the potential to turn professional. As you listen, note down the impact the transitional episode discussed had on both his identity and the identity of those around him.

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Transcript: Audio 1

KIRSTY YOUNG:
You suffered then this really debilitating back condition, spondylosis, what was it? I think that-- yeah.
MATT SMITH:
Yes. Well that's impressive. I always forget what it's called. My lumbar 5 was getting thinner, basically. Yeah. It's a pain in the ass. And had I kept playing, it would have basically got thinner and thinner and thinner. And then in my early 20's, I would have had to have had a sort of metal plate essentially put in it. I mean, kind of Leicester are like, we just can't take a chance on this. But it was tricky because I was captain, and I was doing really well. And I was injured for 13, 14 months.
KIRSTY YOUNG:
And that was your identity. So tell me about losing it.
MATT SMITH:
Very difficult, actually. Yeah, it was very difficult for me to tell people that I had been released, because the vain part of me was like, I am that and I am the footballer. You know, and at school, I was the footballer. And suddenly, I wasn't that. You know, fortuitously, there was a drama teacher, Gerry Hardingham, who said you were never meant to be a footballer. I always thought, you were really great at acting.
KIRSTY YOUNG:
How did he know that? Had you been in school productions?
MATT SMITH:
I did it for GCSE. And he put me in a drama festival and I said I'd do it, and then I just didn't turn up. And then he did it again, and I didn't turn up. He rang my mom and said, look, Matt's not turned up twice. But I'm going to give him one more chance and put him in a play, 12 Angry Men, and my mom said to me, you should do this. And then I went back, and I did it.
KIRSTY YOUNG:
I'm going to ask you a little bit more about that in a second. But I'm interested, it occurs to me as I see you sort of lost your identity, but then for your dad, he was father of Matt, the footballer. He was the guy that ran him everywhere. He was the guy on the touchline. He was the guy that shared the albums and the journeys back when it was just the two of them. That must have been a great loss for him too.
MATT SMITH:
I know. It was. You know, I mean, when I got Doctor Who, I rang him like two months in, and I said I can't do this. And he said you can. The hardest thing in life is to adapt. And you will adapt. And you've got to adapt. And you know, I did. I adapted. And you know, he'd always said it doesn't matter what you do as long as you enjoy it.
But it was tough. It was a tough time. It was a tough time because I was just uncertain. I just felt unfulfilled, to be honest with you. I felt like I was so certain that that was what I was going to do. As I got fit just towards the end, and this is just towards the time when they're picking the boys that were going to play for the YTS, because then you go in and you spend three years as like YT, then you know, I'd been out for a year, and I was trying to get fit.
But playing in all these games where they were deciding, you know, who was going to-- and it was just the love of it. I ran away from home once the night before a match. We were playing Sheffield Wednesday, and I climbed out the window, stole 20 quid out my dad's wallet, got a taxi, I got on a train, got to Euston. I phone my sister, and said, I'm in Euston, pick me up.
KIRSTY YOUNG:
How old were you?
MATT SMITH:
15. And I think, subliminally, I didn't want to play. I said my mom and dad were having an argument. So Laura had to tell dad. He drove up. And it's the only time he's ever, ever swore at me. He drove up, picked me up. He drove me from London up to Sheffield because we were playing Sheffield Wednesday.
And then he didn't say a word, not a word to me, and then I played the game. And actually played alright, funnily enough. And then I got back in the car, and got in, and I closed the door. And he said, you idiot. And that was it. He drove home, didn't say a word. And that was it.
End transcript: Audio 1
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Discussion

While Matt has gone on to have a hugely successful career in acting including a stint as Dr Who, he still remembers how tough the period was when he was dropped from Leicester City FC. Matt reflected on how hard he found it to tell people about being let go from his football club as he was always ‘Matt the footballer’. He remembers it being a time filled with uncertainty largely due to the fact that being a footballer was his only career plan at the time.

You will probably have also noted that the interviewer raises the impact this had on his father whose identity was as the father of a footballer. Those of you who are parents of athletes may empathise with this.

You will re-visit identity again in some of the later sessions. You will now look at the next of the factors affecting how an athlete responds to transitions – that is, the level at which they compete.