‘I THOUGHT MY CAREER COULD HAVE BEEN OVER’
BETWEEN November 10, 2018, and February 24, 2019, 106 days passed.
It was the length of time that Leigh Halfpenny was kept on the sidelines by concussion.
In that 106 days, Wales full-back Halfpenny pondered whether his career might be over and sought the help of a sports psychologist as he dealt with his most frustrating injury.
On the first of those two dates, the 30-year-old was bundled into by Australian Samu Kerevi.
Halfpenny barely saw the yellow jersey coming from his blindside as he kicked the ball clear during Wales’s win over the Wallabies in Cardiff.
Kerevi was late, he made contact with the head and left Halfpenny sprawled out on the floor, dazed.
“I just recall clearing the kick and then being caught in the head,” said Halfpenny, speaking in his first interview since the incident.
“I was just all over the place. I was dizzy, my sight was fuzzy.
“I just thought I had time to get the kick in and then felt the impact.
“I could see the ball was in play so I got up but I was all over the shop. I wasn’t right.”
Admirably, he doesn’t hold a grudge or bemoan the fact that Kerevi surprisingly got away without any sort of sanction.
“With a charge-down, it can be difficult when you’re going full speed.
“It’s a hard one but it was frustrating to have a concussion from it and then the length of time that it went on for.”
The weeks that followed were tough and, quite literally, dark.
Halfpenny suffered throbbing headaches and simply standing on his feet would provoke dizziness. The only remedy for the pain in his head would be to lie down in a darkened room.
His family were on hand to make sure he was looked after. However, his partner Jess was heavily pregnant with the couple’s first child at the time.
Not being able to support her didn’t sit well with Halfpenny.
“I felt a bit slowed down, not quite with it,” said Halfpenny, speaking at a Land Rover event where three youngsters were chosen to fly to Japan and be Land Rover mascots during the Rugby World Cup 2019.
“My girlfriend was fantastic in supporting me throughout the whole time, as well as being heavily pregnant!
“There were times when I’d want to support her but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be on my feet.
“It was frustrating not being able to support her as much as I would have liked.
“She was incredible and my whole family were there for me as well.”
Suffering a concussion is not the same as breaking a limb or damaging a ligament.
For those, you can be issued with a rehabilitation plan, a timeline for a return and a goal. Concussion is a waiting game.
Halfpenny was sent to Birmingham to see a specialist. Loosely put, the return to action involves doing some training if you’re not suffering headaches, and then slowly increasing the workload as long as the headaches don’t return.
But for Halfpenny the headaches returned. They always returned.
The lightest exercise would bring on the pain and Halfpenny couldn’t progress. For an elite athlete, that’s not easy to deal with.
He pondered whether he would return at all.
“If I’m being honest, I did,” he said when asked if he worried his career might be over.
“It just kept happening. I’d let the headaches settle, then I’d feel good and do a bit of training and the headaches would come back.
“Just going on a bike or doing a bit of jogging and I’d get headaches and I’d feel dizzy. I was never able to progress.
“I went to see a specialist in Birmingham; his advice was to keep doing things but to a level that wouldn’t bring on the headaches.
“I was told by the physios with Wales and the Scarlets, and the specialist, that it would gradually get better. But the hard thing is to say when and that was the tough thing to deal with, not knowing when that was going to be.”
During those days he sought the help of a psychologist.
“We’ve got a sports psychologist who is there for the guys to speak to about anything really. I spoke to him to help with the recovery,” he revealed. He was extremely helpful to speak to about things and he helped me deal with it.
“Out of all the injuries I’ve had, this was probably the most frustrating one to have and the hardest to deal with because of the uncertainty and unpredictability of it.
“It’s the not knowing when you’re going to be able to return.
“I’m a sportsman and I enjoy being active and training. To be told not to do much and rest is quite tough sometimes. It’s tough mentally.
“But if you start stressing about the headaches, that makes the headaches worse. It’s a vicious circle.”
But there was light at the end of the tunnel. Just over two months after suffering the injury, Halfpenny was named in Wales’s Six Nations squad.
But Warren Gatland had spoken with the full-back to insist there was no pressure for him to be ready for battle.
After being cleared by the specialist, he returned to full contact training and was released by Wales to get game time for the Scarlets against Benetton ahead of the England clash. Then came another setback. “During the second week of the Six Nations camp is when the head started to feel really good,” he said.
“I started the return to contact protocol, the specialist had cleared me, but then I had a bit of a setback the week I’d started doing full contact. The headaches came back.
“The following week I was okay, I came through the contact fine and played in the Cheetahs game.”
When he was named in the Six Nations squad a few weeks previously, it was revealed that Jess had given birth to the pair’s daughter, Lily.
The newborn was there to see her dad return to the playing field and Halfpenny is loving life as a father.
“It puts things into perspective. My daughter comes first now,” he said.
“I’m loving being a dad. It’s incredible.
“There were a bit of nerves (before the Cheetahs game) but seeing the birth of my daughter was incredible and she took my mind off the concussion a bit.
“To have her there for her first rugby match was pretty special.
“I was just delighted to be back out on the field with the boys.”
Halfpenny has played a further two games for the Scarlets since that return against the South Africans. The headaches have stayed away.
But given the form of the incumbents in the Wales squad, he remained on the periphery of the recent Grand Slam success and didn’t see any game time for Gatland’s side.
“It was awesome to be part of the squad. The boys were outstanding, they worked extremely hard throughout but had fun along the way,” he said.
“We’ve got a really tight group. It was an outstanding achievement at the start of a big year.
“The strength in depth of the squad at the moment is unbelievable, there is a lot of competition for places.
“That can only make you better as a player but also as a squad.”
Halfpenny is now concentrating on rekindling some form for the Scarlets before the World Cup comes into view.
Four years ago he suffered an ACL injury in the final warm-up match against Italy, leaving his hopes of going to a second World Cup in tatters.
Back then he set himself the target of being on the plane to Japan for the 2019 global showpiece.
Sport can be cruel, but one only hopes that injuries are kind to Halfpenny in the future, giving him every chance to achieve that goal.
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