Being away from friends and family is an important issue for athletes at the moment with a number of AFL and NRL teams forced out of Victoria and New Zealand respectively due to COVID-19. Brad Haddin’s main driving factor towards retirement was to make that post-playing era a time to give back to his family for their sacrifices. “Being a cricketer constantly overseas, partners give up so much for that’. To be able to give back, a person also needs to be financially secure, something sport can provide. “Sport can teach you a lot of life lessons and it can set you up for life. To me, I wanted to retire on my own terms; I made sure I was all set up early because you don’t know when sport is going to end” Haddin explains.