I was 63 not out and batting beautifully, flaying Weston Creek fifths all over Rivett Oval. Cut shots, pull shots, mighty heaves down town. I was 16 years old and surely on the way to a hundred. And then they brought on ‘The Angel’. He was quite a bit quicker than his pals.
The Angel (known so for his surname) bowled a half-tracker that I shaped to hook. There followed a meaty ‘thock’ not of leather on willow but rather Kookaburra six-stitcher connecting flush with right temporal bone. And, helmet-free, down onto the synthetic wicket I went.
I got up pretty quickly, though, dazed more than injured – a bit of a sore head, but I knew what was going on. I thought I could have kept on batting but umpires and captains advised I retire hurt. And so off I toddled.
I pulled off my gloves and sat on a bench as the chirp of bird song began playing in my head. I sang along with it while metallic spit filled my mouth. And that was my last memory until I woke in hospital the next day.
Like Canberra Raiders second-rower Corey Harawira-Naera on Saturday night at Accor Stadium, I’d had a seizure. Unlike Harawira-Naera, I went all blue and purple, vomited, thrashed about, foamed at the mouth. My poor old team-mates were in all sorts. They bundled me into a V8 Commodore and sped up Hindmarsh Drive to hospital, pouring water on me, cradling my neck, doing their best as good people do.
Twenty years later, another one. I was punched by a drunk, hard, on the top of the head. More stunned than concussed, I was able to walk home, where I sat on the couch and had a seizure watching TV. I woke up surrounded by police and ambos, concerned flatmates.
I was conscious. Slightly fuzzy but all good, really. But it was up to hospital again. After some professional fussing, questions and tests, the nurses treated me like another dickhead from the pub who’d been in a punch-up. At 3am they said I was good to go and I walked home.
After a week of MRIs and scans, a doctor pointed to some anomaly on a brain-wave chart and said: “Epilepsy.” A form of it, anyway. The doctor said he wouldn’t have known where to look if I hadn’t mentioned the cricket incident 20 years previously. Apparently it had lain dormant. It had taken those two knocks to bring it on. They’re the only two seizures I’ve had but it’s safe to say I haven’t played rugby or cricket, or put my head near anything fast and hard ever since.
Ricky Stuart revealed post-match that Harawira-Naera hadn’t suffered a head knock – nothing overt, anyway, nothing outside the general hurly-burly of the NRL. The second-rower had made a routine, if physical hit-up, become disoriented and then collapsed.
Corey Harawira-Naera. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
Thankfully, it appears Harawira-Naera’s incident leaned more to my second one than first – after the match he was sitting up in the dressing room and talking. He was taken to Westmead Hospital and in the next few days will undergo a raft of tests, and here’s hoping he gets the all-clear. He’ll be in excellent hands and receive the best possible medical advice. He’s 27 and will have some decisions to make.
James Graham made the decision to keep playing after several concussions. Graham is among the most honest and well-researched men in rugby league on the subject. While still playing for St George Illawarra Dragons, the front-rower said the thrill of rugby league over-rode the risk of brain injury. He argued that people over-indulge in alcohol and tobacco despite knowing the risks. He said his grandma has dementia though she never played rugby league. He’d researched things, conducted tests upon himself. And he argued: “What are you supposed to do? Stop playing?”
Well, maybe.
In 2019 rugby league’s eighth Immortal, Andrew Johns, revealed the extent of his epilepsy in a fine and raw interview with his brother Matthew on Fox Sports. In April of this year Dr James Stewart told a Senate enquiry, with Johns’ permission, that the halfback had suffered seizures during and after his brilliant career. After three years of treatment, Dr Stewart said Johns hadn’t suffered a seizure.
Another Immortal, Wally Lewis, told a similar tale in separate interviews with Fairfax and News Corp, describing his own seizures, his empathy with Johns and his desire to play the game he loved despite the brain-fog of physical battle.
Neither Johns or Lewis blames rugby league for their condition. Neither man could definitively say – because experts cannot either – that the head injuries they suffered on the football field exacerbated or otherwise brought on their epilepsy. They may have still had epilepsy if they’d been concert pianists.
Yet as Melbourne neurologist Mark Cook said in Nine’s Good Weekend: “Even through mild brain injuries, the risk [of developing epilepsy] is at least doubled.”
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