Today i welcome a guy who had a long & distinguished career in both the NRL & English Super League spanning 15 seasons. Playing a total of 173 NRL matches for the Newcastle Knights, Melbourne Storm & the Penrith Panthers. Also playing 100 Superleague Matches for the Hull Kingston Rovers. He has played under some of the greatest coaches in the sport of Rugby League & also alongside some of the best players ever to have played the game & future immortals (Andrew Johns, Cameron Smith, Billy Slater, Greg Inglis) He also represented the United States Rugby League Team playing 4 matches for the Tomahawks & also 1 match for NSW Country. He was born in the United states Myrtle Beach, South Carolina due to his dad being a professional Golfer & competing in the 1981 US Open. In his junior years he played Rugby League for the Valentine-Eleebana Junior Rugby League Club in the Newcastle competition. Since retiring from the game he now is the General Manager - Player Relations for the Rugby League Players Association (RLPA).
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Playing information
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| Height | 186 cm (6 ft 1 in) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 99 kg (15 st 8 lb) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Position | Second-row, Lock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Notes
- Important to have your support systems & network in place
- After you retire a part of you dies inside
- The struggles vary from player to player
- The average NRL career is 6 years which is very insignificant in the whole scheme of someones life
- When you retire it is very difficult. There is a mourning process at this time
- Clint was smart enough & had some good mentors that steered him in the right direction while playing to set himself up for when he retired
- Clints advice is to put things in place while playing to make the transition when the time comes a lot smoother
- Clint got comfortable with rejection prior to his NRL career even starting which he believes helped him transition smoother
- He had a willingness not to give up which is what saw him play any games in the NRL
- If you don’t have close family & friends to support you through your transition GET a mentor. Build your own support network
- Clint let go of the ego attached to the dollar amount when it came to his last contract
- His mindset was that the contract value does not = your worth. He had a high self worth
- A good quote Clint goes by is “The struggle ends when your gratitude starts”
- Prior to playing in the NRL clint missed countless rep sides where a lot of his mates made the rep teams. This taught clint about rejection & also resilience
- Success is DIFFERENT for everyone. You need to know what success means for you
- Your WHY in life is so important. Know your why
- Always put yourself outside your comfort zone & stretch yourself go grow
- Towards the end of CLints career he took a big pay cut to return home to play for the Newcastle Knights where it all began. His task was to mentor the young kids in NSW Cup. Where he went on to have a fairytale finish winning the premiership with those young kids he was mentoring
- During the last year playing he started working on his personal brand to launch himself into a career after he finished his Rugby League Career
- Clint got very focused on community initiatives & invested a lot of time into those community initiatives which he got so much value out of doing
- He loves having a positive impact on others & helping making someone else's day to day life better
- Clint is a very outward thinking person which i believe is one of the main reasons he continues to succeed in his personal & business life
- A couple of books clint read to help him with his transition were
- The Go - Giver by Bob Burg
- David & Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell