Factors Affecting the Transition to Retirement of Professional Rugby Players in South Africa

Abstract

During the 1970s and early 1980s sports psychologists developed an interest in how professional athletes dealt with retirement. Initially, the process was considered to be a single, all-ending event. Consequently, the termination of an athlete’s sporting career was seen as being inherently negative. However, as the study of this process matured and the body of knowledge around the subject grew, the process of retirement was reassessed and deemed transitional in nature instead. This transitional approach was subsequently expanded in the 1990s to include phases in an athlete’s career other than retirement; this resulted in the current holistic, life-span view of athletes’ careers. The aim of this study is to explore the factors affecting the transition of professional rugby players to retirement, and to establish to what extent South African rugby institutions have programmes in place to facilitate this transition. The focus of this study is professional rugby players in South Africa who have performed at the professional level (both domestically and internationally), and it examines how the skills athletes acquire on the field may be transferred to other careers once they retire. The data for this study were obtained through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with willing respondents involved in professional rugby in South Africa. The interview schedule consisted of a number of open-ended questions and all interviews began with questions that were considered not too invasive. The key findings of this study are that athletes who do not adequately prepare for retirement experience far more difficulty when transitioning to retirement than those who do plan for their retirement. A second key finding is that professional rugby organisations in South Africa provide insufficient support to those players who are transitioning out of the sport.