Everitt Leaves the Game
Barry Everitt has announced that he has retired from professional rugby to concentrate on his teaching and coaching career.
Everitt enjoyed a long career with a number of high profile clubs. At his best many said that he was just as good at fly half as Johnny Wilkinson and was unlucky that he never made the impact in the Ireland team that many may have expected.
He is leaving the game to focus on a Director of Sport role, which he is due to take up at a private school. He says that he hopes this will give him vital teaching and coaching experience, which he can use to bring back into the side at a later date.
There are a number of positives and negatives to retirement for this player. It's important to consider both as it will allow you to judge the impact that Everitt is likely to have if he takes on a coaching role at a big club at some point in the near future.
Positives
The main positive for Everitt is the fact that he will be able to move away from the stressful routines of professional rugby and generally relax a little bit from the game. This means he can always retain his love for rugby because it would never have over-exhausted him.
He can now build up his coaching experience. He may well have a little bit in the bank already but he has the chance to start from the bottom and work his way up. If he had jumped straight in at the deep end, it would mean he could have suffered and his reputation as a coach would have been dented.
He will stand a good chance of renewing his love for rugby through the group that he is about to teach and coach. Young people in a school have the ability to spread their youthful energy to others and Everitt will enjoy his role, which could increase his love for the sport he already admires.
Weaknesses
There are a few risks that Everitt will experience now that he has retired from the game. By cutting himself of from the professional level to go and teach in a school he will lose touch with the scene of professional rugby. This means he may be unaware of new technology, techniques and other facets linked to the future of rugby from this point onwards.
He may find it difficult to adapt in his new role. Professional players get used to doing things in a certain way for a long period of time. He will have to change the entire way he thinks about rugby because it will be back to basics when it comes to teaching kids in schools. This could mean that it takes Everitt longer than he would like to start having an impact as a coach and role model.
Advice
If you go to a bookmaker now you will have to try and negotiate a special bet because there will be nothing mainstream that can be linked to Everitt or any club or organisation that he represents. This means you could bet on him to be a coach in the Premiership within the next five to ten years. You may not get great odds for this but it is one of the only bets that a bookie will be willing to give you now that the player has retired.
Try and track his progress as a coach because if you don't like what you see you can always try and get your cash back.
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