The cost of fame takes its toll on our sportspeople

The Lomu family during a luxury family holiday in Dubai taken just days before Jonah died suddenly on November 18. Photo / Facebook

Jonah Lomu’s financial woes were not uncommon in the sporting world, writes Andrew Alderson.

The fundamental lesson learned from the Jonah Lomu saga is fame does not guarantee fortune.

Lomu, giant of the fledgling professional rugby age in 1995, stirred sporting passions whenever he touched the ball. He stirred social sympathies with news of his financial vulnerability in death.

He is not alone. Boxer David Tua, All Blacks Inga Tuigamala and Zinzan Brooke, swimmer Danyon Loader and cricketers Lou Vincent and Mathew Sinclair are high-profile sportspeople who also struggled to adapt to life after sport. Dozens more have juggled jobs, sport and family life with difficulty.

That contrasts with savvier stories like those of Richie McCaw, Sean Fitzpatrick, Daniel Vettori, Sarah Ulmer and Andrew Nicholson, who worked out how to survive and ultimately prosper.

As professional sport has developed in New Zealand over the past 20 years - particularly in the most popular summer and winter team codes, cricket and rugby - systems to protect players have advanced.

Athlete support services, such as players' associations for cricket, rugby and Olympic sports, reputable player agent businesses and more progressive governing bodies now provide invaluable safety nets.

A former first-class cricketer dressed in an old suit and tie and armed with a note knocked on the office doors of the New Zealand Cricket Players' Association in 2013 asking for chief executive Heath Mills.

Once seated, the ex-player slowly detailed how his life had spiralled out of control since his career ended.

He played in the amateur era when the love of the game came first and the realities of life were a blissful second because cricket would open doors when retirement intervened. Yet until the players' association opened its doors, they had slammed.

Each year, several such pleas trickle in via word-of-mouth among former teammates.

Protection of player wellbeing in the professional era has become a priority.

The Cricketers' Hardship Trust was established nine years ago to help past players and their families pay for medical treatment and funerals.

Fundraising from the annual players' golf day, player donations and occasional man-of-the-match payments go in the kitty.

"It takes incredible courage for players to admit they need help," says Mills, who wanted to protect identities out of respect.

"Some have enjoyed extensive first-class careers but, through no fault of their own, ended up in situations with crises that affected their health, family or finances."

Cricket can be a brutal mental sport. In 2012, the Herald revealed more than one in five contracted players had sought psychological help over the previous season.

A split-second misjudgment, a delivery pitched millimetres from its intended mark or a dropped catch can have a drastic impact on a player's future.

"Contrary to misconceptions, most players don't earn hundreds of thousands a year," Mills said.

"The vast majority of domestic players earn in the vicinity of $20,000-$40,000. In previous generations, they played sport around their jobs.

"Now the sport has a career path and there are few opportunities to do anything outside that."

It is common for cricketers to enter the professional environment straight from school with ambitions of cracking the international circuit. That can leave them vulnerable to insecurities and challenges years later.

Sanj Silva leads the players' association's Career and Personal Development Programme with the aim of reducing future hardship.

He says retiring with financial security is almost unheard of. "How many players could make a case to retire post-cricket? Maybe half a dozen? For most, it's six months of seasonal employment.

"We face a barrier of those who expect to get a media, coaching or administrative job once they're out of the game because cricket has been their life."

Silva's solution is to get players to accept their direct involvement in cricket will end.

"We work on the basis of three pillars - career transition, personal development and risk management. It's not just about getting a degree.

Not everyone is a student so they could work at getting a trade. As long as they're doing something towards their retirement. A bad injury means it could come tomorrow.

"There's also an emphasis on mental health and wellbeing, financial education, drug and alcohol education and relationship advice because they're away so often."

Greg Dyer has worked in the sports management industry for 13 years, including eight in the New Zealand office of global firm Essentially Group.

He says player wellbeing has improved dramatically since Lomu's era.

"However, there can be fly-by-nighters pretending to be agents or 'friends of the family'. The intentions can often be short-term gain rather than a long-term solution for what players want.

"They need the right team around them to assist and plan for the future. That means providing credible financial advisers, personal banking relationships, quality accountants, tax advisers and lawyers. They need property protection. "

Dyer says their role is to steer but never to push. "Top sportsmen should aim to be mortgage-free by the end of their career so they don't have to sustain a large expense base, because they seldom make as much money when they retire.

"They should also get some income-earning investments in a portfolio and not be afraid to spend money getting the right advice.

"My understanding was that Jonah was a very generous guy. He probably found it hard to say no."

When Lomu died he was struggling financially and living in an Epsom rental property.

His situation wasn't helped when a company he owned bought an apartment from his father-in-law, Mervyn Quirk, for $1.58m in 2008, almost $700,000 more than the former bankrupt paid for it 10 months earlier.

Compounding the impact of such decisions was the renal illness that saw his All Black career end at 27.

The state of his financial affairs prompted the players' association to set up the Jonah Lomu Legacy Trust to raise money to help his two sons.

Association boss Rob Nichol acknowledged there would be questions over where Lomu's earnings had gone, given his rugby status.

"His generosity was obviously a massive part of it. He has definitely taken on obligations of others at the expense of himself, [wife] Nadene and the boys."

It seems that many top sportspeople are cash-rich but financial knowledge-poor.

They excel at the expense of an education in the wider skills of life. That's not a criticism but a reality of the commitment required to devote to elite sport.

Tuigamala told the Herald in 2013 he lacked professional skills when he retired from rugby in 2002 and had to learn through painful errors like the liquidation of his funeral business.

"Someone sold me a lie that you will be successful in your business because you were a successful rugby player," he said. "I've learned that is not the case."

All Black Brooke accepted bankruptcy in 2012. He told the Woman's Weekly: "For about six weeks [wife] Ali and I felt completely alone.

"It was just the two of us, trying desperately to keep our heads above water and feeling like we'd never fix it.

"It was a really lonely place - we had no idea what to do."

When cricketer Sinclair retired in 2013 he thought it would be "easy" to get employed.

"I had a profile of playing for my country for several years and assumed someone would grab me and put me into a job," he told the Herald on Sunday last year.

"It must have been seven or eight months before I landed a retail assistant job.

"I lasted nine months before being made redundant. That's the harsh reality."

Sinclair has since joined real estate firm Harcourts. "I can understand why sportspeople get depressed. You feel like you're not wanted after playing the game for so long."

Sinclair, whose heroic 214 against the West Indies remains the highest test debut score by a New Zealander, had advice for the next generation.

"Get involved in a business, learn the art of customer service or sweep floors to be part of a working team. You're not going to get far in the real world if you sit at home dawdling between practices and games."

McCaw, the poster child for the modern sporting professional, arguably saved his best and most refreshing decision until last.

He could have sidled back to what he knows with a role in rugby coaching, administration or punditry. Yet he chose to train as a commercial pilot with Christchurch Helicopters.

Here was a bloke prepared to start anew, in a profession he'd trained in, without relying on his reputation.

He will leave his greatest legacy if he can continue to show there is more to life than rugby. Likewise, there are lessons to be learned from Lomu's premature death.

Lomu was a pioneer in stature on the field but, if the rhetoric is to be believed, off-field situations like his will become rarer, too.

Architects of their own downfall

Around the world, sports stars who have risen to the top of their game have found life afterwards difficult to manage.

Some have been the architects of their own downfall because of personal issues but others have struggled to transfer into a business life.

A study by Sports Illustrated in the US showed a staggering 78 per cent of National Football League and an estimated 60 per cent of National Basketball Association players go bankrupt or are under financial stress in just two years and five years, respectively, after their retirement.

Yesterday, former NFL star Clinton Portis, 34, filed for bankruptcy with debts of more than US$7 million despite earning an estimated US$60m during his career, which ended after injury in 2010 injury.

USA Today reported that Portis said he had only US$220 in his cheque account.
Among the most infamous downfalls was boxer Mike Tyson who, at 20, became the youngest boxer to become a WBC, IBF and WBA champion. He earned more than US$400m yet declared bankruptcy before he retired in 2003.

Argentinian footballer Diego Maradona set the world record for transfer payments twice and was paid $6.5m a year to coach in Dubai.

But after drug and alcohol problems, the Italian Government claimed he owed US$70m in unpaid taxes from his time playing for Napoli from 1984 to 1991.