You can quit the sport and keep everything it taught you. The jersey goes in a drawer. The work ethic doesn’t.

Stopping does not revoke anything. You were someone who trained in the dark and got up for away games and took correction in front of other people, and none of that was held on loan against your continued membership. What you quit was a fixture list, not a character.

So say I used to play, without the apology that usually follows it. Then put one of the habits somewhere it is needed now: the early start, the willingness to be coached, the turning up on the bad days. That is the part that was always yours.