The issue rugby can’t put in too-hard basket
The late Tasman Mako and Māori All Blacks halfback Billy Guyton suffered 17 concussions during his career, and when researchers examined his brain post-mortem they found that the two hemispheres of his brain, which are supposed to be fused together, had separated.
Those details, included in a report on TVNZ’s Sunday show, are confronting for anyone who loves the game and the gladiatorial contests it provides.
Yet, while the easy thing to do would be to look the other way and find comfort in our familiar debates about All Blacks contenders or other relative trivialities, the age of innocence and/or ignorance has passed.
Guyton’s death, and subsequent diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), should be a turning point, and the lessons from it used to protect past, present and future players.
Guyton was just 33 when he died of suspected suicide in May, 2023.
He was farewelled by hundreds at Trafalgar Park in Nelson last year, including his friend and former Highlanders player and defence coach Shane Christie, who has subsequently spoken of his own struggles after he, too, was forced into an early retirement due to concussion.
CTE, a neurodegenerative disease, can only be diagnosed in death, and is associated with a debilitating range of symptoms including impulse control issues and anxiety.
Guyton also experienced extreme sensitivity to light, another common post-concussion issue.
After Guyton’s CTE diagnosis was confirmed, New Zealand Rugby expressed sympathy to his family and admitted it was concerned about the “possibility” that head knocks from playing the game could lead to neurodegenerative diseases in later life.
NZ Rugby has, over the past decade, introduced a number of measures to improve player welfare, and player awareness around concussion has improved to such an extent that All Blacks captain Sam Cane removed himself from a Super Rugby game last year, even though the knock escaped everyone else’s attention.
However, NZ Rugby also said more research was needed to understand the links between head knocks, CTE and the conditions such as depression.
The questions raised by Guyton’s death, therefore, relate not to whether NZ Rugby is trying to make the game safer, but whether NZ Rugby and the New Zealand Rugby Players’ Association have the correct attitudes and practices to look after already damaged players once their careers are over.
On a podcast with Crusaders assistant coach James Marshall last October, Christie revealed the lengths he went to seek help during a dark period in his life, including self-funding a trip to Mexico to ingest ayahuasca, a plant-based pyschedelic drug.
One of the tragic things about Guyton’s death is that his post-mortem provided vindication for what he had been saying during the final years of his life, when he told others he was sure he was suffering from CTE. But it is clearly unacceptable that it took his own death for people to understand the depth of his suffering.
The questions raised by Guyton’s death ... relate to whether... NZ Rugby and the Rugby Players’ Association have the correct attitudes and practices to look after already damaged players once their careers are over.