Life After League: Ex-Wigan youngster Liam Forsyth on leaving the sport to pursue new career

The now-27-year-old progressed through Wigan’s academy, making his first team debut on the wing in 2017 against Warrington Wolves.

Predominantly a centre during his playing days, Forsyth went on to make 13 more appearances in cherry and white before joining Leigh ahead of 2019. But when the pandemic hit, the outside-back decided to begin looking at a career outside of the sport.

He opted to make the move to part-timers Swinton Lions in the Championship and start a job with a fire protection and security company.

But after numerous injuries, the outside-back further decided to focus on a new career, having ‘loved’ his time at Heywood Road under respective ex-coaches Stuart Littler and Allan Coleman.

He said: “When I was at Leigh, and when Covid hit, I thought that I didn’t really have anything outside of rugby league.

“You don’t think like that as a youngster. When Covid happened, I think it scared me a little bit. I thought I’d go part-time, sign with Swinton and get an apprenticeship or something behind me.

“I later put an application into the fire services and got in. It’s been really good.

"I’ve done it for a year now. I picked up an injury so I wasn’t playing all the time. I was only 26 at the time, but it felt almost like it was coming to an end and I needed to sort something out.

"That’s when I put in that application. I sort of put it in not expecting to get in and just get some experience, but obviously I did.

“There’s a few lads there, Joel and Logan Tomkins are both in the services. Logan is in the same base, Joel is elsewhere. Logan has been in maybe a year longer than me.

“I’m loving it. It felt pretty natural. It’s like a big team ethos kind of thing, and being in rugby, you almost crave that. So it felt like a natural progression in that sense.”

Forsyth, who also played rugby union as a junior, has further backed young players coming through academy systems to keep an eye on life away from the field, having somewhat regretted not doing so himself.

“Going back to rugby, I should have done better outside of rugby, it’s difficult to find the time to do it,” he admitted.

“I was going to college at 16 or 17, I didn’t get any qualifications out of it because I was training all the time and went full-time at 18.

“I was only interested in rugby, that’s all I wanted to do. As I got older and I realised I wasn’t going to be playing Super League every week, you start to consider things outside of the sport.

“That step away from rugby can be difficult. I half think it needs a bit of restructuring at the academy level to prepare these lads. It can put people off playing too. Something needs to change, in my opinion.”