Former Premiership top try-scorer Tom Varndell wants better training around coping with social media abuse for players in the professional game following Owen Farrell's announcement that he was stepping back from international rugby last week.
Varndell, now coaching at Oxford Brookes University and Oxford Harlequins, scored 92 tries in the Premiership between 2004 and 2018 – with his record as top try-scorer in Premiership history lasting from February 2017 until April 2022 when it was broken by Chris Ashton.
Speaking on The Rugby Paper Podcast the former Leicester Tigers, Wasps and Bristol Bears winger said that until he called time on his career, social media was only seen as a positive thing.
And though Varndell believes players can still accept robust responses to poor performances from the coaching team in their club, the verbal attacks they receive online take their toll.
“In terms of interaction, it was always seen as a very positive thing,” he said. “Interact with fans, have a general chat with them, some players even took personal business online and used it to promote them. So there are so many positives to social media.
“It's only really since I've retired that these ‘Keyboard Warriors', as we call them, seem to sit there and not just pass criticism but personal abuse.
“Rugby players can take constructive criticism, you have a bad game at the weekend and you know on Monday you're in for an absolute hammering from the coach. It's when it starts becoming personal [that players struggle with it].”
Varndell believes that the culture of social media being used as a weapon for online trolls has particularly manifested itself in the period since he retired, and that he is fortunate to have avoided being a victim of it. Farrell and top English referee Tom Foley's decisions to step back in relation to such vitriol should mark a turning point in support for players and officials in his view.
“I personally haven't experienced it,” he added. “I was lucky to escape that generation as I'm sure I would've got plenty. But there wasn't any real training for it, and I'm not aware if there is much now either, and it's such a hard thing to prepare boys for cause you don't know what you're going to get.
“People are brutal. They have that protection of hiding behind a keyboard, not revealing their name and not even putting a picture up with their account. It's such a difficult one and there isn't much protection there for players and there isn't much training that I'm aware of at the moment.
“The only thing that was ever made clear to us as players was to not criticise referees, which I think is a good thing in our sport, but there has to be more training on how to deal with things, not just about how you behave as an individual.
“That needs to change quickly because it's becoming a big problem. When big personalities in our sport are having to step away from it, it should really send alarm bells around the game.”
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