Why Do Retired Sports Heroes Die Young? –Odegbami

Last week, I saw an old Daily Sketch newspaper cutting with the portraits of football players – the starting line-ups of the two finalists at the 1975 FA Cup final in Lagos, Rangers FC of Enugu and Shooting Stars FC of Ibadan.

The pictures brought back memories of a day that will go down in my story as one of the great dramas that is etched forever in the minds of supporters of Shooting Stars FC involved.  They had to wait for me on the corridor of the classroom to complete my last examination paper that morning before breaking all speeding rules to drive me to Lagos in their branded Coaster bus to join the rest of my team. This was on the day of the final match. (I leave that story for later).

Our portraits in the newspaper now posted on a social media platform reveals a painful part of an ugly situation that stares Nigerians in the face today – the plight of many retired sports heroes.

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There are 22 portraits of the players.

I go through the faces with their names below them. It is a painful realization that of the 11 players of Shooting Stars FC listed, only two are still alive today! I am thinking: this is so NOT because I have earned it, by the Grace of the Creator of the Universe.

Of the 11 members of the Rangers Football Club team only 4 are still alive, I believe.

It takes a while for all this to sink in as I stare in shock. Most of the national football heroes of 1975 were all very young men at the time. Many of them died when they were in their 30s, 40s and 50s. There may be only one or two that died in their 60s. It is a shocking revelation. But why?

Only two weeks ago, Moses Effiong, a member of the 1980 Africa Cup of Nations, added to the statistics. He was 65.

Last week, a member of the 1984 and 1980 African Cup of Nations teams, Ayo Ogunlana, also passed on. He was 67.

Why is it that so many young retired footballers die young? Does this extend to other sports too?

I don’t have any answers.

Is there a connection between retirement from sports and dying at a young age? Are these ‘premature’ deaths connected to the mental state of the athletes as a result of the hardship of living after retirement?

There is plenty of evidence all around us pointing to the present lives of retired sports heroes.

We need an urgent scientific/ medical inquest of some sort.

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That’s why, the National Sports Commission must react to the remarks, last week, of the former President of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, on the matter of retired sports heroes.

During the turning of the sod of a new sports complex in Bayelsa State, he described the condition of most retired sports heroes as beggarly, and called for the establishment of a special fund/scheme to take care of their welfare for the rest of their lives.

The conversion from a life where their every need is being met to a life where they have to fend for themselves is a very difficult transition to make successfully for retired sports heroes. They wake up one morning, without a proper plan for life-in-retirement, and suddenly find out that the transition between being rich and being poor is very a thin line indeed.

Unfortunately, experience has now revealed that even ‘academic qualification’ is practically not enough. The world of sports is littered with educated as well as less educated failed heroes. Both seem to die young. That’s the ‘koko’ of the matter.

It is worthy of a national inquest.

(OPTIONAL)

My story of the 1975 FA Cup final!

In 1975, I was a final year HND student at the Polytechnic, Ibadan.

The final of that year’s Challenge Cup coincided with a test that I had that fateful day in November.

Even as a student, I was a key member of the Shooting Stars FC team, with responsibility for scoring the team’s goals.

Members of the Supporters club volunteered to wait for me to complete my examination, and to drive me in their bus to Lagos in time for the match.

The trip to Lagos took 3 hours. We arrived  Ikorodu Road with 3 hours to spare to the start of the match and then ran into horrendous traffic. The construction work on the dualisation of that main artery into Lagos was ongoing.

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One hour to kick off we were crawling into Western Avenue, some two or so kilometres to the National Stadium, Surulere. The supporters decided we should get down from the bus and walk the rest of the way to the stadium. My football boots were in a bag I slung around my neck as we trekked and sweated in the blistering humidity of Lagos just before the Harmattan season.

We eventually got to the overcrowded stadium and only managed to enter through the teams’ entrance after fighting with security personnel about my identity. How could a member of the team still be outside the stadium when the teams were about to file out? That was the big question.

Finally, we entered the stadium just as the two teams were filing out of their changing rooms. The team saw me there waiting under the tunnel. Of course, it was too late to join the party as they climbed up the stairs that led players to the ‘Theatre of Dreams’ – the main bowl.

The team list (without my name) had been submitted. Allan Hawkes did not have any information about my whereabouts, so he left my name out and told the officials he would still win the match without me. Those were not the days of the mobile phone.

I stood to one side in the tunnel and watched my colleagues walk onto the field for another epic confrontation between the two biggest clubs in Nigeria at the time.

I ended up sitting on the teams bench ruing every minute of a match I could have played and made history as my first FA Cup final. I watched painfully as Rangers’ Ogidi Ibeabuchi raced down the flank to score the lone goal that separated the teams in that encounter.

Shooting Stars supporters still believe that my absence on that day from the team made all the difference.

We will never know now, will we?