Former Workington Town coach Leon Pryce has revealed his struggles to adapt to life after hanging up his boots.
He was speaking to SOM Talks podcast after watching his son Will make a try-scoring debut for Huddersfield in a home defeat by Wigan.
Pryce says he will never allow his 18-year-old son make the same “stupid mistakes and errors that cost me.”
Pryce senior, now 39, is a former Great Britain international who won every domestic club honour in a glittering career, but says he will use his own difficult journey out of the game to keep Will grounded.
He retired in 2017and said: “William has seen everything from needle to thread of what rugby can do to you mentally and physically.
“He has seen me struggle with having to leave the game behind, so we will make sure he has a plan B and plan C and not like me who only had one plan.”
After a trophy-laden career with Bradford, St Helens, Catalan Dragons and Hull FC, Pryce struggled with the transition out of the professional game when he hung up the boots.
After a 40-game spell coaching Workington, winning 24 of them he now combines commentary duties with an advisory role at French side Montpellier Sharks, and works in a residential care home alongside another multiple Grand Final winner, former Leeds forward Ryan Bailey.
Pryce says he has finally found peace with the next phase of a life he had taken for granted.
In the podcast he says: “You assume that because you have got a profile in the game, you’re always going to be able to pick up work around the game. That’s my own fault, I have nobody else to blame.
“You think you’re this superstar, people want to ring you up and be your friend and you kind of assume and think it can’t be that hard surely.
“It was such a wrong attitude to have and I will never make that mistake again, I will never allow William to make that mistake.
“It’s something I’m already working on with him now, so that he won’t be in the same position that I put myself in.
“I went from training in and around 30 lads every day for 20 years, to being sat on my own in the house watching Jeremy Kyle. That sent me into a dark hole.
“I was drinking too much. Where I’d go and play rugby I’d instead pick up a bottle of wine and go home and feel sorry for myself.
“Playing rugby gave me an escape and massive coping mechanisms, and when you cut that out I didn’t really know where to turn.”
Pryce accepted help from Sporting Chance and set about getting his life back on track.
“It’s been a long journey to get to where I am at the moment. I’m in a really good place now and enjoy my job, I still have a massive void that probably won’t ever be filled, through not being involved in rugby. It is a game where people can drop out very easily. There isn’t much work about. It’s not like football where there’s a million jobs.”
SOM Talks is the official podcast from award-winning mental health and fitness charity State of Mind Sport and is available on all major podcast platforms.
