Quote:
Originally Posted by
James
I just wondered if he was bitter about his treatment by the Force or if the Force was bitter because he didn't want to stay on.
He left citing personal reasons, with the statement being:
"I just need some time off. Everyone has been so supportive, but it has been very hard. I always wanted to be someone who tried things.
"It is not that coaching is not for me, I just think it is not for me right now.''
I don't remember any particular comments on an acrimonious break but if it was, this (Sports Factor - a conversation with Ben Darwin) suggests it may have been effect rather than cause. Key comments I thought were:
Mick O'Regan: So do you think you'll go into coaching?
Ben Darwin: I have gone into coaching to a certain extent. I coached in Sydney, I coached in the Western Force in Perth for a year. I was a sports coach there, and there are certain elements I didn't enjoy. I love the interaction with the young guys, and I came back to Sydney. To be honest with you, I had a bit of a battle with depression when I was in Perth and I thought the best thing would be to come back and spend time with my family and decide what to do next but I've worked with Northern Suburbs, their club in Sydney, and just working with young guys is enormously satisfying. And I probably enjoy more that one-on-one relationship. I think the politics of rugby can often be pretty difficult, pretty Machiavellian if you will, it just can be pretty hard, and I sometimes think that that may take away from the enjoyment I have of the game. So I think if I do coaching now it'll be more one-on-one and just doing individual skill with guys and enjoying that friendship.
Mick O'Regan: Do you think that the depression you suffered was a result of your injury?
Ben Darwin: Oh, I think that when you go into professional sport, you can often put aside anything else that's a pressure in your life, because you're getting paid an insultingly good amount of money, and you have an easy existence. So any kind of difficulties you may have had kind of get pushed away. And when I had my injury, I then tried to just dive back into work, and then when I got under pressure again in my work environment when I was coaching, I think that the difficulties I've had before in my life tended to come back. And I'm fairly public about it, I had a pretty tough childhood, and my parents got divorced, and I had a pretty hard time with it, and that just tended to fold back on top of me once that pressure came on. And so I kind of had to do my growing up, I feel like, in the last couple of years.
And depression for me is not being sad, I hear a lot about this, suicide, and I work a little bit in the area, and one thing is that you have difficulty stopping the noise, if that makes sense, and difficulty stopping your mind being at ease. And I think that it was put aside during my rugby career but at some stage of the game, you know this all had to be dealt with and it was dealt with - it was almost forced upon me, and I unfortunately ended up getting divorced at the time after I had my injury, and I think there was obviously cause and effect with a lot of these different things, but it all seemed to pile up back at the same time. That's a long answer to that question, isn't it?