Legal action vital to stop concussion tearing apart men and families
Steve Thompson won the 2003 Rugby World Cup with England. He can’t remember the tournament, let alone his long throw that set up the winning drop goal. Thompson now works on a construction site. The foreman asks him to get a hammer. Thompson walks across. He looks at the tools. Which one, he asks himself. Then he picks them all up. He has already forgotten. Thompson is 42 years of age.
At his playing peak, Thompson remembered complicated lineout signals. Now he can scarcely remember his name. And yet for me, the man whose column I once ghosted in those articulate days of long ago, is now even more of a hero than he was in his World Cup-winning pomp. It takes huge courage to come forward and talk of your decay. Great athletes feel shame easily and Thompson’s tale will have stripped him in the telling.
For that we should all thank him. The exEngland hooker’s story should wake up New Zealand because there are young men all over this country who are currently going through the same devastating trauma of memory loss, mood swings, headaches, the confusion of brains fried by repeated major and minor concussions.
Some of these Kiwis are already prepared to speak out like Thompson, to help repair a game that has left them broken and abandoned. The movement began in England, but it has swept across the world. New Zealanders are now joining in the collective legal action being taken against World Rugby and other governing bodies.
Richard Boardman, the lawyer who has been preparing the case for almost 18 months, got in touch with me. He briefed me on the case and then he wondered if I would share my experiences and views on concussion with him. Then he asked if I could talk to people in New Zealand who might want to join the action being taken against rugby’s governing bodies for their shameful failure to protect player welfare.
It took about a second to agree. So yes, I am declaring an interest, but shouldn’t everyone in this country declare an interest. We are looking at what Boardman calls an ‘‘epidemic’’. It is an epidemic that is ruining young men’s lives, many of them in this country from disadvantaged Pasifika and Ma¯ori communities. Most of them had no idea of the risks. They were not properly educated by the governing bodies and they were not properly protected.
Inspired by Boardman’s compassion, I contacted Tim Castle, the current chair of Drug Free Sport New Zealand and a barrister who has been fighting for Iwi and Pasifika rights over many years. Castle said he would certainly help and would talk to some of the players he used to represent.
One of those players is Neemia Tialata, a 43-cap All Blacks prop and amember of the 2007 World Cup squad. Tialata has his struggles these days. He was the victim of an appalling punch in 2007 when playing for Wellington against Hawke’s Bay. The assailant was not sent off at the time, but Tialata only came round when he found himself sitting on the replacements bench.
He now has headaches and mood swings and other problems associated with that punch, and all the other concussive blows he suffered over the course of a long career that also took in Bayonne, Toulouse and Narbonne.
But Tialata, who is now 38, still has courage. His late father was a pastor and his wife is a pharmacist. Tialata’s own strength is still considerable, but it grows further with the help of those close to him. He has committed to being a part of the claim, not for his own sake, but to encourage others to come forward and in order to support current and future players.
‘‘I have decided to join the claim of my fellow players to encourage others to come forward and to give them the support they need. My Samoan heritage is important to me and I feel doing this is something my father would wish for me if he were still alive. I hold myself out to help the community so that the players of the future don’t suffer some of the things that my generation are now suffering. I hope and pray that others will feel able to join me in this action. Together we are strong.’’
Tialata and Castle will form part of a strong New Zealand front row, perhaps aided by former ABs strongman Carl Hayman, for this action. Castle, aWellington barrister and international sports lawyer, has acted as a trusted agent and manager for manyMa¯ori and Pasifika players. Their welfare always comes first.
Castle says: ‘‘I would love New Zealand Rugby to come out and support the players. We are seeing too many players across a generation who are tragically damaged at a young age. We have to usher in a new whakaaro.
‘‘Now is the moment in time for collaboration. I ask administrators across the globe to come together. I ask them to acknowledge the problems of the past, to remedy them today and to protect the players for the future. I call on the decision-makers to do the right thing by these young men.’’
The authorities must know that it is not just the players who suffer. Mel Popham, the wife of former Wales international Alix Popham, told the BBC: ‘‘It’s watching the lights fading gradually in him. My biggest fear is Alix ending up in a nursing home. And for my daughter, my biggest fear is her losing her dad; him being here but not being the same Alix. We had so many big plans for the future. We’ve got different plans now.’’
Michael Lipman, a former England international who played for the Melbourne Rebels in Super Rugby, sometimes hides in a room in case he embarrasses himself when he goes out. He has been married to this wife Frances for three-anda-half years, but he can’t remember how long they have been together. When Lipman proposed to Frances, she told him that technically she was still married and still needed to finalise her divorce.
‘‘That’s really important information,’’ said Lipman, ‘‘You should have told me earlier.’’ But Frances had told him. More than once. He just didn’t remember. Lipman is 40. Popham is 41. Both are part of the claim being made against the governing bodies of rugby.
Popham and Lipman have each been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, early onset dementia and probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
Why would you not help an action that seeks justice for these young men and which seeks to provide some security for their families in the future? Why would you not join an action that seeks to hold the game’s governing bodies responsible? Why would you not join in an action that might just make rugby great again?
I wrote at the end of August: ‘‘World Rugby had better act soon because I can promise them that a storm is coming. The game’s governing body and its incorporated unions are going to be sued and their liabilities will be colossal.
‘‘It happened to the [gridiron] NFL and is going to happen to rugby in the next 12 months or so. World Rugby must change the game, even if the changes come tragically too late for far too many young men and women.’’
‘‘Bill Beaumont and Brett Gosper and the rest of World Rugby had better wake up fast to the coming reality or they will be swept away. They will be swept away by lawsuits and they will be swept away by a public that will no longer swallow a second-rate product.’’
That was a heads-up. Boardman told me: ‘‘Susan Rodway QC is our lead counsel and Dr Steve Allder is our neurologist. We have over 70 former players [now nearer 100] showing symptoms suggesting neurological complications, such as migraines, loss of memory, insomnia, depression and an inability to concentrate. Once we go public, we believe we will be looking at an epidemic.
‘‘Our aims are two-fold: (1) to secure financial support for our former players in retirement and (2) to ensure that current and future players are fully educated on the risks involved in playing, as well as adequately protected. As you know, the
NFL has gone through something similar [with a group action], and the sport has never been stronger – nor safer.’’
This is about players’ welfare and aminimum accepted standard of care.
I have written about this subject every year since 2009, initially for the Daily Telegraph in the UK and then for Stuff . And in 2017, at the behest of my friend Dr Simon Chinchanwala, I was guest speaker at the Auckland medico-legal society dinner and spoke to them about the peril of concussion in rugby. The lone dissenting voice was a doctor who had turned up from NZR.
At Stuff and Sunday News, wewill continue to prioritise coverage of this vital issue for rugby, and more importantly for rugby players.
In 1977, rugby agreed to stand down players for three weeks for concussion. They were not even allowed to train. With the onset of professionalism, the stand-down period was reduced to aweek. Rugby had actually regressed in its standard of care.
And it is still failing. Early in the recent Mitre 10 Cup final, Auckland’s Taniela Tele’a was clearly concussed by a shoulder to the head in a tackle. It took Tele’a 105 seconds to get back to his feet. Three medical staff started to walk him off, stopped for a discussion and then, unbelievably, allowed him to carry on. No head injury assessment, nothing. Tele’a eventually came off halfway through the second half after a second knock.
Time and again rugby fails in its duty of care. It’s concussion protocols have been hopelessly inadequate for years.
Boardman says that the brain degeneration caused by repeated concussive knocks suffered in professional rugby is ‘‘ultimately an industrial disease’’.
Day by day we are beginning to understand just how widespread this disease is. Surelywe have the decency and compassion to help these youngmen and their families, and to protect all the ones that follow in their once mighty footprints.