In an interview given to The Rugby Paper and picked up by Rugbyrama, Montpellier full-back Stuart Hogg opens up about the dark spell that pushed him to announce – in 2023 – an early retirement, which he now says was the “biggest mistake” of his life. He also looks back on his mental state, his return to playing and his personal difficulties.

In the interview published by The Paper Rugby a few days ago, Stuart Hogg, 33, looks back without varnish on his decision to end his playing career in 2023, at 31, in the hope of “saving my marriage“: “At the time, I did not know who I was,” he says. With hindsight, he considers it “the biggest mistake” of his life.

During that (long) spell in the wilderness, Hogg describes a deep unhappiness: “I was up to my eyeballs in antidepressants“, “I did not know what was going on in life“, “I used alcohol to escape. I was simply existing“. The tipping point came with a bike ride organised by the Doddie Aid charity, from Scotland to Rome: “That is where everything changed,” he explains, stressing that it was “the first time since my retirement that I felt part of a team“. He says he then took advantage of that lift to tell his father: “I have made the biggest mistake of my life.”

After fifteen months away, Hogg returned to the top level by joining Montpellier in the summer of 2024, a club that sniffed out a good deal. He insists on his new priorities: “The players and the coaches like me, perhaps because I finally value myself.” The flip side, though, is painful: “The real drawback is being far from my children and not being able to see them regularly. I hope they will be able to come and see me in France,” he says.

A return in sight?

On the legal front, the Scotland international’s past remains present in the press: in 2024, Hogg appeared in court in Scotland on charges of harassing his former wife, precisely, after breaching a restraining order. The news agency and television channel ESPN reports that in November 2024 he was sentenced for those offences to a five-year non-contact order among other measures.

On the pitch, Hogg is working his way back after rupturing his Achilles tendon last April. Even so, he says he is “in a better frame of mind than ever“, and admits: “I will never be the same Stuart Hogg as before, but that is fine. I have found peace.“