A sudden end to your playing career doesn’t mean an abrupt end to your SACA Player Plus access, as Craig Thyssen happily discovered

One Saturday, erstwhile Warriors all-rounder Craig Thyssen was scoring 33 for Walsall CC in an English club match. The next Saturday his 10-year-long career was over…

“I didn’t know it would be my last match,” he says, recalling what followed that fateful match on 21 July 2013.

“On the Monday morning I woke up, had breakfast and went to the gym like a normal day. Afterwards, while I was lying on the couch watching TV I just started having headaches and stuff. I remember there was a clock on the wall, it couldn’t have been more than four metres away but I couldn’t see the time on it… it was so blurry. When I got up my head was sore so I thought it was just a migraine.”

Only it wasn’t… after a week of ‘tunnel vision headaches’, a teammate’s brother advised a brain scan. The result? “They found strokes on the brain.”

“A few weeks earlier I’d hurt my knee and considered flying home but when I told them that at the hospital they said I might have died on the flight… they found a blood clot on my heart too and it would have exploded at altitude! A higher power was looking out for me.”

Following treatment Thyssen did return home, but the remaining blank spot in his left eye ended, at 29, a career that had started as a prodigious schoolboy at Grey High in Port Elizabeth.

As it turns out, he now nurtures talented schoolboys, as Paarl Gym’s first team coach.

“I was lucky, when this happened to me I still had a season – 2013/14 – left on my Warriors contract, so I could still look at what I wanted to do. Melonie Gobel [SACA’s Eastern Cape-based Personal Development Manager] was a massive help in me identifying that I should to go into coaching.”

“With Craig, as with all the players we work with, we really looked holistically after the player and to make sure that they’re ‘okay’,” says Gobel. “Usually we’ll start from a financial perspective by identifying their short-term and long-term goals. We also look at life preparation work, like getting a will in order and other life skills they might identify in one-on-one workshops. More specific to Craig, he now didn’t have a job, so we gave him a CV template to do his own and then fine-tuned it with him. Then we as SACA heard of the coaching job at Paarl Gym and endorsed and motivated for him – he got the job ahead of a number of other candidates.”

To round off their transition support, SACA Player Plus also motivated for Thyssen – and current national bowling coach Charl Langeveldt – to do the CSA Level III coaching course in 2014/15 .

“There was obviously limited space, but he did superbly and got great marks. It shows what a person can do, given the opportunity,” Gobel concludes.

Buoyed by the support, Thyssen has made a successful start to his new career.

“When I arrived in January 2014, the first team was ranked in the 50s I think – remember it’s a rugby school – but we ended the year ranked 10th so I think we’ve done well.”

He has also been unafraid to go straight to the top for some advice…

“[Proteas coach] Russell Domingo was my coach from Under-15 to academy level, and brought me back to the Warriors after two years playing for Free State. He has always been willing to answer any questions I have.”

Besides that, Thyssen can count on first hand experience – three years of SA Schools [2000-02] alongside the likes of AB de Villiers and competing against Brendon McCullum and Alistair Cook on SA Under-19 tours – to nurture the schoolboys under his watch.

“They are always asking me questions about that and my career. The one thing I always tell them is that talent can only take you so far, but you have to work hard if you want to turn professional… and that your career can end when you least expect it.”