GAME OVER #3: YouTuber. Barista. Prison Guard. How footballers can build a second career
đŁď¸ âYou might not miss football as much as you feared.â PFA Scotland are helping to build an off-ramp for players approaching their endgame
Welcome to part III of award-winning sportswriter Stephen McGowanâs investigation series into the impact on footballers when they hang up their boots.
In Wednesdayâs Part I, we heard about former Aberdeen defender Kevin McNaughtonâs desperate post-retirement cry for help.
Yesterday in Part II, we heard from Rory Loy, Lee Mair and Mark Reilly on the stark reality of the transition years.
In todayâs final part, Fraser Wishart and Chris Higgins of PFA Scotland outline what the playersâ union are doing to help ex-pros adapt to life after football.
Parts II and III are for paid subscribers.
This is Stephenâs fifth Nutmeg investigation: four previous here. To access Stephenâs full investigations, plus monthly data breakdowns from Nick Harris, Adam Cleryâs tactical analysis, and player columns⌠sign up for a Nutmeg season ticket in August â and youâll get 12 months of access PLUS a yearâs subscription to the beautiful, 200-page print quarterly delivered straight to your door.
By Stephen McGowan
Fraser Wishart always had an eye on Plan B. Something he could turn his hand to if life as a professional footballer came under threat or duress.
Between 1983 and 2001, the chief executive of PFA Scotland played for eight different clubs and remembers a testing six-month spell at St Mirren when he was ostracised and ordered to train by himself. During an era in which struggling players were invited to man up and give themselves a shake, Wishart was forced to consider if football was really for him.
He studied for a Higher National Diploma in Business Administration at the old Queenâs College, now Glasgow Caledonian University.
âAt one point, I was also accepted for teacher training college when I was still playing for Motherwell,â Wishart recalls. âI thought, âI donât know if Iâm enjoying football and I might just go and be a teacher.ââ
By the dawn of a new millennium, he had won a league medal with Walter Smithâs Rangers and mastered the art of survival in a cut-throat, dog-eat-dog environment.
Keen to impart the lessons he learned from his own experience, Wishart became the assistant to Tony Higgins at the old Scottish Professional Footballersâ Association. His trade union skills came in useful when his playing career wound down. At Clydebank, then Airdrie, financial instability was a fact of life.
âItâs difficult,â he says of the transition phase at the end of a playerâs career. âAs a union, we have Chris Higgins in charge of personal development and we run things like the football management diploma at Napier University.
âThatâs been running for five or six years now, and the number of people, from Marvin Bartley, to Dougie Imrie, to David Gray who have done this is heartening.
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