Former Saracens rugby union player Alistair Hargreaves, 38, launched craft beer company Wolfpack with former teammate Chris Wyles, 41. For Hargreaves, whose rugby career was cut short by multiple concussions, the transition was essential.

Today, the company has bars in Queen’s Park, West Hampstead and Fulham Broadway. Its beer pours on draught in more than 300 pubs, premium bars and sports clubs across the country. There are 50 employees, including bar staff. Turnover is £4mn, compared with £50,000 in the first year of trading.

Did you start your business by accident or design?
By design, because we were coming towards the end of our rugby careers. One evening we were socialising in the pub, and our next career move was right in front of us: craft beer!

As we lived on the same street, we rented an office nearby for our research. We spoke to many people in the industry and toured a lot of breweries. It was invigorating, because we realised that there would be life after rugby.

Neither of us had a clue about business. It was naivety. We could never have made a presentation to the bank. They would have laughed at us.

But our plan paid off. After driving all over the country, we found a £12,000 derelict bus in a Leeds scrapyard that had been untouched for five years. Then we hired a driver to bring the vehicle back to London.

A stage-design company was able to strip out the inside of the bus and knock out the windows to create a bar. We installed 15 beer taps. The first night there was a match at Saracens, we parked the bus on the corner of the pitch in the stadium. The takings were £15,000. We were ecstatic.

We had started brewing ourselves with homebrewing beer kits from Belgium. It is very easy to make bad beer. The secret is how to make it good. Chris and I may not be world-class brewers, but experimenting did help us understand the process. We designed our own recipe and put it out to tender to third parties, who brewed our brand under licence.

Our first bar was a mechanic’s rundown garage in Queen’s Park. The site had character, and we imagined turning it into a rustic taproom. It is awesome now, but we spent months negotiating with the council to get an alcohol licence. We opened after six months, having had to put in a beer cellar and toilets.

Was professional rugby a good preparation for business?
I would not be where we are today without my rugby background. There are a lot of parallels between professional sport and business: discipline, communication, teamwork and resilience. You need to practise these skills away from the sports field for them to be relevant in the real world.

Do you have a pension?
I am disorganised, and I don’t have a pension. There is no good reason for it. I believe I opted out of a pension at Saracens, though both Chris and I earned six-figure salaries.

I own my own home, and any spare cash has gone into the business, which is risky, but I’m betting on myself. I don’t have a lot left on my mortgage.

Do you have a huge credit balance?
Not really. It can get bigger at times. It accumulates but then I pay it off in chunks. I wish I were one of these people who just pay everything off at the time once a month. I’m a bit of a procrastinator, but I am not extravagant.

What did you have to sacrifice to start the business?
The seed investment was £100,000 that we scraped together from savings. We now have a debt facility and have raised over £2mn capital in 2019 and 2024. The company is now owned by shareholders, who include me, Chris, and the others are largely made up by friends and family.

How did you cope during the pandemic?
With zero turnover, we had to furlough our staff and negotiate with our landlords, who were very generous. If you had beer you were allowed to dispose of it through a formal process and reclaim the duty. (Beer can have up to a six-month shelf life.)

We decided not to do that, but give something back to the community. We loaded our Wolfpack Land Rover Defender, then installed six beer taps on the side of the vehicle. We drove it around London every day and gave away free pints to anybody who had tagged us on social media. It kept us busy, helped our communities engage with what we are doing, and made a lot of people very happy.

What impact has inflation had on your business?
It has had a dramatic effect, but we were at a size where we were able to ride it out. The big challenges have been increased expenses for energy, labour and raw materials through the supply chain. Consumers are going to pubs less but, so far, our pubs have done well. Being quite conservative with our expansion has helped.

What is your view of the recent Budget?
It is a disaster for hospitality, the third largest private sector employer in the UK. To penalise the sector by raising national insurance puts even good businesses under pressure, and we are the ones who create jobs.

The Budget measures will probably cost Wolfpack an extra £30,000 in national insurance contributions. It is short-term thinking. Pubs and breweries have to consider recouping these costs by laying off staff or increasing prices to consumers. Pubs and breweries are closing daily.

What unexpected bonus have you enjoyed since starting the business?
We have poured Wolfpack at some of the greatest sporting venues, such as Twickenham, the Oval and Wentworth. I am very proud of that. Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones walked into our pub in Queen’s Park when it first opened, which was very exciting, until he asked for directions to the restaurant next door!

Your best savings tip during tough times?
For the past year I have had the Emma app linked to my bank account that tells me each day exactly where my money goes. It just puts into black and white how undisciplined your spending can get. You don’t think cups of coffee, the odd Uber ride or lunch at Nando’s cost much, but things like that do add up.

I try to teach my young children about money. I pay each of them £5 a week into their kids’ saving accounts, GoHenry. Then they decide how to spend it.

My wife and I do share one indulgence. We are selective about what we eat. Our biggest weekly expense is at the local butcher, because we like quality red meat.