When the spotlight, adulation and the training regimen are gone, some sportspeople slip into a dark of hole of depression, writes Andrew Webster.

FOR John Cross, the moment of clarity came in the thickest fog. He admits he was never a gifted player. But from 1991 to 2003, in 265 first-grade appearances for Illawarra, Penrith and St George Illawarra, he prided himself on churning through the hard yards when those around him were dead on their feet.

The playmakers could have their tricky passes and kicks and the three-quarters their white-hot speed. "Crossy" just worked his guts out.

So it shouldn't surprise that Cross realised he was suffering from acute depression and needed serious help when he couldn't move at all.

"The first time I didn't get out of bed for a week - that was the last straw," says Cross, 35. "When I couldn't function - and I had my two kids there watching - that's when it really made me do something."

Cross does not want you to think he is weak. He's not looking for compassion. He's not telling his story because he's looking for shoulder to cry on.

"I don't want to sound like a soft c--k," he says with a smile. "I don't want to appear to be whingeing and looking for sympathy.

"I'm one of the lucky ones who has had a bit of support with what I went through. It's the ones who haven't got that who really struggle."

Legendary golfer Gary Player once remarked that he played the perfect sport because he can whack little white dimpled balls right into the grave. Other elite sportspeople are not so lucky, because at some stage they must rack the cue, hang up the boots, throw away the goggles.

Sports Retirement Stress - as it has been termed - isn't a new buzz word contrived by a sports shrink. In recent years, former Olympic swimmers John Konrads, Duncan Armstrong and Shane Gould have spoken about their demons.

Former AFL footballer Wayne Schwass has created the Sunrise Foundation, which focuses on depression among young men, after his mental battles. Its aim is to "stamp out the stigma" and spread the message that depression is not a weakness.

Last night at the Seymour Centre in Sydney was the final performance of Topo - a play about the sad manner in which one of the Wallabies' greatest props, Enrique "Topo" Rodriguez, grappled with bipolar disorder once his career had ended.

Yet the theme keeps enduring, raising its head and questions about how to deal with it.

In the football codes the transition could be considered harder - not because of the physicality of the game but its culture, that of an uncompromising code in which admitting a mental problem would make you a sook.

"I know of a lot of rugby league players who have suffered when they have finished," says Gold Coast Titans coach John Cartwright, whose troubled winger Chris Walker admitted to alcohol and anxiety problems this season. "But they suffer in silence.

"Nobody wants to talk about it. Rugby league is a tough game played by tough blokes. It's not an easy thing for them to open up about.

"I don't want to say it's depression - I'm not sure what you would call it - but the stress that comes when you retire is definitely a bigger issue than people and the game might think."

When rugby league superstar Andrew Johns was forced into retirement in April with a serious neck injury, the immediate concern was how a league nut-case such as the Knights' champion playmaker would handle life on the sidelines. But those close to Joey say he is loving life without a football in his hands every day.

The comedown, the release of the pressure valve at the end of a player's career, is felt by most and can affect the most unlikely of players.

Take Shane Webcke.

You'd imagine that if any player could seamlessly slip into retirement, it would be the former Australia, Queensland and Broncos hard man who had a pub, a farm and an investment portfolio long before he retired on grand final day last year.

He was an uncompromising prop who never relied on a player manager and struck his own deals.

"It hit me like a sledgehammer," Webcke says. "I didn't see it coming - it blindsided me.

"I wasn't hit with depression or anything like that. But it was initially very tough."

Told that he had appeared to be a player who wouldn't struggle with life post-career, Webcke says: "I had myself firmly in that category, too. I had a lot of options, but because rugby league is so institutionalised for players - it's just a matter of switching on and off - you miss that.

"Even during the off-season, you are living and breathing your sport 100 per cent. Everything is about footy and, let's face it, league stars are very pampered."

Then he adds: "It felt as if someone had ripped a piece of me away."

That's from a player who didn't feel depressed.

For some, such as Cross, the effects were far worse.

Looking back, he can see there were warning signs during his playing days.

"My wife tried [to get me to talk about it] for years," he says. "We never talked about it, because I had to concentrate on footy. And I put it down to the winning and losing of footy games, I guess."

When he pulled off the boots for the last time at the end of 2003, he took up the job of coaching the Dragons' Jersey Flegg side and "that's when it all came crashing down".

Cross moved his wife Natalie, and children, Jack, 9, and Georgia, 7, to Sandy Beach, north of Coffs Harbour, and captain-coached Woolgoolga in the Group 2 competition, in the hope of shaking the "black dog".

"But that didn't work," he says. "I'd just run away and brushed it. Sooner or later, you have to face up to it and start talking about it."

Cross insists he didn't miss the game. It was the physical exertion that goes with it, the daily grind of training and playing.

It's a common withdrawal symptom. Former Brisbane Lion Marcus Ashcroft played professionally for longer than Cross - 318 matches from 1989 to 2003 - but on retirement put off getting a new job as a qualified accountant and kept training like a full-time athlete, running in the soft sand of the Gold Coast.

"I don't miss playing," Cross says. "I don't miss the attention or anything like that. It was just purely the fact that I went from exercising every day to doing nothing. And having no desire to exercise, either."

How bad did it get?

"From not getting out of bed for a week to crying like a baby, to not getting enjoyment out of anything, to not keeping in contact with good friends and withdrawing from everything," he says.

"Looking back now, I'd probably battled it since my 20s.

"But I'm from a snap-out-of-it and pull-your-finger-out culture. That's how I was brought up. I remember the doctor asking me if I had any of it in my family, and I said, 'You'd never know. They would never have talked about it'.

"It took me a long time to admit that something was wrong. That was the hardest thing - going to see someone about it. It's also admitting it's actually a chemical imbalance in your head. If you had diabetes, you would take insulin. Break a leg, you would put it in a cast.

"People say there isn't a stigma about depression, but there is. It takes a bit of getting used to."

In his darkest hours after his career finished in 1987, Rodriguez hid under his desk, occasionally contemplated suicide and took on a succession of menial jobs.

"I still have my up days and down days," he says.

While he believes the depression that affects athletes when they retire is no different from that of any individual pushing the boundaries of life, he says officials across all sports should ensure young athletes are thinking about their post-career life the moment their professional sporting one begins.

"They should start working backwards from the day they start," Rodriguez says. "They should say, 'I'm going to give it a crack for 10 years'. Set a retirement date and have a career ready for when you retire."

Cross has been doing a lot of thinking lately about his post-footy life. He part-owns two bottle shops near his home on the North Coast and when The Sun-Herald spoke to him he was in the middle of a three-month course at the Maritime College in Fremantle. He says he doesn't know what the answers are, but finds that talking about his condition has helped him emerge from the fog.

This month, the NRL's One Community program is increasing the awareness of depression with its "Help a mate stay in the game" campaign with Lifeline to combat the incidence of suicide. It couldn't be better timing, says Cross.

"The league needs to look at things because they are coming to the end of the first generation of full-time players," he says. "Blokes who have been in the game as a full-time profession are starting to retire now.

"I think that's where Lifeline comes in handy. I had the support of my wife and family. If you don't have that, you need to make a phone call and seek help."

For Cross, researching his disorder and toiling as hard at it as he did his footy has helped him make hard yards in his life.

"Just the fact that I can even talk about it means I'm on the way to well and truly putting this behind me," he says.