The Little Death

It may have been swept up in Paul Gallen learning to play prop overnight but Daniel Conn from the Roosters announced his retirement from the game this week. As far as careers in first grade go you would say the heavily inked Conn was somewhere in between John Rhineberger and John O'Neill, a solid player who had a fair crack at first grade in between some stretches in reggies.
Daniel ‘Dodo' Conn wasn't everyone's cup of tea (errrr especially not Michael Weyman's) but reading through his press conference this week it's hard not to empathise, if not sympathise, with the man.



He did have to spend 2hrs with Tara Reid after all

Although he seems to have been around forever Conn is only 25 and retiring from his career when most people are just beginning to settle into theirs. The phrase they like to coin for a sportsman's retirement is la petite mort, not French for clichéd memoirs but for ‘the little death', a feeling that even the most amateur of competitors can relate to when life forces them to hang up the boots and instead wash the cars on the weekend.
The term is poignant for the fact that like many before him Conn was forced to make the choice every professional footballer fears, the choice between a footballing life and life itself.
Conn's knockout injury was not of the ankle or knee but the neck, arguably the one body part a rugby league player can't do without and a brutal, invasive injury that promised only one thing for his future - pain.

You said it Clubba

For a rugby league player pain is the constant companion, one whose presence may be like a distant pen-pal during the good times but lingers like a nagging landlord in the aching bones and creaking joints on a cold winter's morning. The temptation would have been there for Conn to try to outrun his shadow, to take another jab and another pill to hold back the creeping tide, but time makes fools of us all and a stiff hospital bed can make golfers out of gangbangers.
Conn should fare better than many post football, a face that doesn't look like it's packed into too many scrums and the self-awareness to know his own limitations should see him through. Whilst his journey is just one of many the game will see it is still a sombre reminder to all the TV stations, CEO's and officials who make their living from the game that the footballing life of the player is indeed one that lives fast and dies young.



'Fast' is a relative thing.