Daggett enjoys new sporting career with PCA help Former Warwickshire and Northamptonshire seamer Lee Daggett is enjoying a second sporting career as a physiotherapist with Premiership rugby union side Northampton Saints thanks to help from the Professional Cricketers’ Association. Daggett, now 34, retired from cricket four years ago after he had helped Northamptonshire win the NatWest T20 Blast, having planned for his next career for five years. Daggett initially put his plans to train as a physiotherapist on hold when Warwickshire offered him his first professional contract but he revived them following discussions with Lynsey Williams, one of the PCA’s team of Personal Development Managers. In his final year with Warwickshire and his five seasons with Northamptonshire, Daggett studied part-time at Salford University on a course that has also seen two more county cricketers, former Worcestershire and Derbyshire wicketkeeper Jamie Pipe and ex-Yorkshire, Lancashire, Surrey and Nottinghamshire slow left-armer Gary Keedy qualify as physiotherapists. Daggett benefited from financial support from the PCA, who part-funded his course through development grants, and he made the decision to go full-time with Northampton having spent a winter on a work placement at Franklin’s Gardens. ” I have always credited the PCA for the support they gave me. It was not just financial or the preparation for life after cricket but I found that my cricket performance seemed to go up when I had more things going on off the field,” Daggett said. ” I think that was a mental thing. I had other options and other things to think about which kept my mind occupied and it meant I could just go out and play cricket. ” It’s not just having a career after cricket in place that I have to thank the PCA for. It’s the fact they helped my cricket career. ” When I graduated from Durham I had a place on a physiotherapy course at Teesside University but I turned that down when I got a contract at Warwickshire. ” In about my second year with Warwickshire I started talking to Lynsey about my options and we started thinking about doing the physio course. ” At the time the Salford course was the only one that had some flexibility that allowed you to combine it with playing. ” I wouldn’t have been able to afford to do it without the PCA’s educational funding. I couldn’t get NHS funding because I had already done another degree but the PCA were fantastic. I got the maximum funding each of the five years it took me to qualify, which was around £ 8,000 in all. That’s unbelievable really and something that I will always be grateful to the PCA for.” Having started his physiotherapy career looking after Northampton’s second team, Daggett is now part of the first team medical squad with his background as a professional sportsman helping him to settle into the role. ” As a new graduate physio going into any professional sports environment if you didn’t have the respect of the players you would struggle,” Daggett said. ” It takes time to get that respect but, having played professional sport myself, has allowed me to have a little bit of grace and an acceptance that I was a new graduate and I was learning in the role. ” The lads respected the fact that I was from a similar background to them and it’s definitely helped.” Daggett recently established a part-time private practice, Move4 Physio, with three of his fellow Northampton physios based in a converted milking parlour on a farm on the outskirts of Northampton. The new venture is going well but Daggett still enjoys his day job and is able to offer Northampton’s players valuable advice on the importance of planning for life after professional sport from his own experience. ” I’m really enjoying working at the Saints. The more experience I gain, the more responsibility I get and I’m still developing well,” he said. ” It’s great being in and around the dressing room environment and I’ve always been an advocate of players doing things off the pitch and making sure they have plans in place for careers after rugby and trying to keep themselves occupied. ” I know from my cricket career that, at the time it doesn’t feel like it, but you do have a lot of spare time. So I do try to help the lads to understand that while they are playing how lucky they are and how much opportunity they have to achieve other things. ” I use that kind of background and my experience to try and help the lads along and encourage them to develop themselves in a broader sense.” More information about PCA Development Funding can be found here.
