'F***ing lonely' - Former World Cup winner Ben Cohen calls for more support for retiring players in blockbuster interview

‘F***ing lonely’ – Former World Cup winner Ben Cohen has called for further mental health and career support for those leaving rugby in a blockbuster interview with The Telegraph Sport today.

There’s no doubt that leaving a job or sports team that has made a big impact on your life can be daunting. There’s the huge ‘what-ifs’. What if the next step doesn’t live up to expectations? What if leaving the current post is a mistake?

But…what if the whole next step is simply a, ‘what’?

Well, that was the case for Cohen when he left the sport he had called a job for 15 years. The former Northampton Saints winger stepped off the professional rugby pedestal at just 33 with no sustainable plans for the future, nor skills to help him develop them. Despite winning the biggest title in rugby, a memory that will forever live in the minds of England fans, the reward failed to provide him with any standing outside of the rugby world.

“It meant everything, winning a World Cup“, said Cohen. “The bigger issue for me was that I just didn’t get a skill set or a life skill, and now I think, well, OK, winning a World Cup doesn’t really bring me anything. It’s not like it’s a degree, you know.

“I probably wish I’d got a skill set and a steady job. Then I probably would have looked the other way and thought ‘I wish I could have been a sportsman’. But the reality is I would probably rather have been over [on that other side], because it’s going to suit me for the rest of my life, instead of a portion of my life. When you sort of get [to retirement] you think: ‘I’m in my 30s, who am I?’ And at that point you think, I am lonely here, this is sink or swim.”

“When you’re part of something systematic, you kind of lose yourself within that, and that’s your structure; what time you’re going to get up, what you’re going to eat, when you’re going to play or train and everything like that,

“No different to the services. Once you take that out, what do I do? And where do I go? Because I’ve been in an industry that says ‘yes’ to you all of the time.

“That whole adjustment into civvy street is hard, and that reinvention, you kind of fall into being an entrepreneur, because you haven’t got the skills set to go into systematic. I was 32, 33 when I retired. Although I set up my anti-bullying foundation and all that kind of stuff, it catches up on you in the respect of, who am I?”

The charity Cohen founded now raises funds by selling products and hosting events to support both current and former players. As Cohen explains, the aim is to provide “mental health support, access to therapy, and pathways into education and employment,” helping individuals transition from “the huddle to the hustle.”

Speaking about his own transition from the group environment that rugby prides itself on, to the utterly solitary loneliness that can follow, Cohen said:

“We’re all in a huddle and it’s happy days, ‘yeah great, we can do this’. Then you turn around 180 degrees and it’s f****** lonely. You go, ‘I’m out on my own, where do I go now?’ And then you think ‘Oh s—, am I fit for purpose?’. That whole journey needs to be a transitional phase into coping skills and deconditioning into civvy street.”

So what do rugby players tend to do once they retire from the sport? Well, some stay in the sport through punditry, either on television or through specialist columns in papers like the Telegraph, or websites like RugbyDump. Others go into coaching, nutrition, personal training or other related careers. But more often than not, most go in a completely different direction.

Former Bath hooker Ross Batty can now be found working on a building site, Tom Dunn is preparing himself for a post-career food business having cheffed as a youngster, Paolo Odogwu and Jacob Umaga have their own clothing franchise, and Ellis Genge works with young rugby players in his area.

The point is…many players continue their love of the sport or transition into another love. But what if you don’t have another love?

Despite Cohen’s regrets about not developing skills to adapt to “civvy” life, the sport did provide the now 46-year-old with, not just an incredible career, but true support when his father, Peter, died in 2000 aged 58 following a fight in a Northampton nightclub owned by his brother, Justin.

Ben told the Telegraph. “Our whole family fell apart”, as did his form. “At that point, I was given an ultimatum; either keep my job or lose it, because I wasn’t performing. I had no father figure. Wayne Smith [the Northampton coach] was amazing, saying to me, ‘I want to help you and pick you back up off the floor, put you back on the tracks and help you all the way’, which he did.”