Retiring from sport was the hardest problem of my sporting profession. Right here’s how Andy Murray can do it proper | Catherine Spencer

When you play sport at a excessive degree, that sport is every little thing you understand. It’s what you consider whenever you fall asleep and what motivates you to leap away from bed within the morning – the lure of the pitch or monitor or court docket. So, as an athlete who devoted a lot of my life to taking part in rugby for England, I’ve a way of how Andy Murray is likely to be feeling.

Murray left it till the final minute to make his determination to retire from tennis. Requested what he hoped for from his remaining matches at Wimbledon this week, he stated: “Maybe a bit of closure … I simply need the chance to play another time on the market hopefully on Centre Courtroom and really feel that buzz.” I do know that feeling very nicely. The help from the gang and the nation is sort of a drug. So, too, is the sense of goal – the combat to be one of the best you can be – and the sense of id {that a} profession in sport brings. Who’re you if not the elite athlete who spends each hour planning and coaching? Who will he be if not the tennis participant that the general public know and love?

My retirement in 2011 was the hardest problem of my England profession. After the heartache of simply lacking out on World Cup glory in 2010, losing 13–10 to New Zealand within the remaining, I needed to end on one thing extra constructive. Because the tennis participant Anne Keothavong, who retired at 29, stated this week: “You need to have the ability to exit in your phrases – you don’t need that taken away from you. You need to know that you just’ve left every little thing on the market [and] you don’t have any regrets.”

I knew firstly of the Six Nations that I used to be going to retire, however once I advised the squad the night earlier than our final sport of the match I may hardly get my phrases out, such was the intense emotion. Sadly, I used to be on the bench for many of that sport, watching what appeared like the biggest clock I had ever seen in conjunction with the pitch counting down the final minutes and seconds of my England profession. Sport psychologists had been ever-present whereas I used to be a rugby worldwide, however once I wanted assist probably the most, after I hung up my boots, I needed to fend for myself.

Since I began taking part in, psychological help in high-level sport has develop into extra widespread and extra skilled. However my conversations with different retirees present that I used to be not the one one who felt alone and adrift after stepping again from the sport. One former Olympian advised me she felt as if she had been dropped off the sting of a cliff. I’m advised that help for retiring athletes has improved since then, and I think about Murray could have many plans in place. I hope he’s surrounded by sensible help to discover a path to a brand new profession, in addition to much-needed emotional help to assist him discover that “closure”.

However I now additionally know that retirement by no means ends. 13 years on, I nonetheless battle with what they name “the change curve”. Initially a mannequin to grasp the grieving course of (it begins with shock, strikes in direction of denial then plummets by anger and melancholy), the time period is now used extensively all through enterprise and sport to grasp and handle change. Ultimately the curve heads upwards by acceptance and onwards to integration. I’ve not made it that far but.

I’ll be rooting for Murray as he goes by his personal change curve – although I’m certain he gained’t really feel deserted. In actual fact, I think about that tennis will nonetheless need Murray, however Murray might want to give himself just a little area to determine how a lot he needs tennis. There can be days when he’ll need to be proper in the midst of it, and days when he’ll need to be as distant as potential. It would take time to search out equilibrium.

After I retired, I discovered myself wandering again to my pre-England previous. Throughout my college days, I performed the French horn to a excessive normal, and I picked that up once more after a 20-year break and joined an orchestra. The tennis participant Dominic Inglot, who retired two years ago, says it’s a “scary thought … calling time on one thing you’ve been doing all of your life” – but when for the second you possibly can’t keep in mind what you probably did earlier than your life turned all about your sport, it could assist to discover a new focus. I climbed a few mountains, staggered by a few marathons and travelled the world as a volunteer with the wonderful Tag Rugby Belief. Then I set up my own company and wrote a book.

Murray will discover his approach, I’m certain. He can be in demand the second he lays down his racket. However he might want to give himself time to search out out who he actually is, now that he’s not merely “Andy Murray, tennis champion”. Retirement might be powerful, however he has the energy of character to make one of the best of it. He has risen to the problem so many occasions as a tennis participant. I’ve little doubt he’ll rise to the even more durable problem of being a retired tennis participant.