While many athletes might dream of putting their feet up for some much needed rest and relaxation when they retire, the opposite can be said of Jason Nightingale.
The Dragons legend called time on his rugby league career at the end of last season as a one-club man.
Affectionately known as ‘Gypsy’, Nightingale spent 12 seasons at St George Illawarra where he was part of the 2010 premiership-winning team.
But the Renown United junior has had one of the busier starts to retirement after following one of his passions to take on a new post-football challenge. Coffee.
Nightingale’s cafe, Flow Espresso, opened at Kogarah earlier this month. It was the culmination of a long-held desire to enter into small business.
And the former red V winger has been as hands on as can be, endeavoring to learn every aspect of his business.
Rising with the sun, Nightingale makes his way into work from the shire. It was his best mate’s experience in the cafe business that gave Nightingale the ambition to do something similar.
“It has been a very enjoyable but intense mini rollercoaster post footy so far,” Nightingale told the Leader.
“It has been very busy. I’m one of those people that doesn’t relax.
“It’s been in the making for a while now. A long time. I always thought I’d be able to do it while I was playing but realistically I want to be here and learn everything. So it has been a very, very busy retirement so far. But it was what I planned.”
Plenty of his former teammates have already dropped in to show their support from Benji Marshall and Tyson Frizell to the only man who Nightingale says drinks more coffee than him, James Graham.
Nightingale was one athlete who always had an eye on the future.
Knowing that his rugby league career wouldn’t last forever, Nightingale studied a Bachelor of Business at the University of Wollongong and built his Elite Athlete Business School during his playing days.
But small business is what he wanted to pursue.
“I like hospitality, I like people and I like coffee. And I think this is a good industry to be part of,” he said.
“And it’s a very different business. People might think it’s simple but there’s a lot of moving parts to the business. You’ve got suppliers, products, customers, staff. I think some people look at a cafe and think you just turn on a coffee machine and run it.
“But all these moving parts make it so you can learn a lot of different things. And that’s what I like to do. I love coffee so I love learning how to be a barista.
“I think you can learn a lot of skills from the hospitality industry.”
The round trips from Sydney to Wollongong for training on the famous Dragons Bus helped develop Nightingale’s passion for coffee as he got older.
He likes to mix it up when it comes to his own coffee, though he calls the strong flat white his staple.
Nightingale describes his as a long education but one that many can relate to.
“There’s not a lot of footy players that don’t have three or four a day. It’s such a rollercoaster with training, you’ve got to be on and intense. Caffeine helps that more than anything,” he said.
“The Dragons bus still stops to put in an order at the coffee shop every single morning. You’d get up 15 mins earlier just so you can stop for coffee on the way.
“Then all of sudden you go from drinking weak, caramel lattes as [former Dragon] David Gower started out embarrassingly in front of Dean Young to drinking strong half flat whites. To short blacks, ristrettos, the more you get into it the more you understand how much is to it.
“That excited me and following my mate’s direction and advice and having plenty of free time when you’re an athlete.
“You can’t be sitting at the pub, you have to sit at cafes. We used to have days where you’d start at 6.30am in Wollongong. The eight of us from Sydney, we’d have a second training session, it might be 10am, last session at 2.30pm.
“All you can do in between is sit at a cafe and drink coffee and talk to friends. All those things helped develop my passion for coffee.”
