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The Afterlife

Rugby is all about bigger, faster, stronger. But that is putting intolerable strain on the athletes and there are growing fears about what awaits the top players in retirement. In the clichéd world of rugby sound-bites, everyone talks about going forward. It’s not like there is any other chronological direction for mankind to consider, but yet, despite the needless use, it’s doubtful that many in the game really do look too far forward.

Monday, 29 March 2010

Gregor Paul

There is no better sport at keeping minds focused on the present than rugby. This is a sport of collisions like no other. The big men of the NFL have layers of padding to keep them partially protected and short, short seasons. The vaunted NRL doesn’t ask as much of its players in terms of volume. And its collisions are confined to the tackle, unlike rugby where there are tackles, clean-outs and scrum engagements. The hits come with or without the ball.
Even the little weedy blokes who wear No 10 have to be a bit rough and tumble these days. Nor can they be particularly weedy, with Dan Carter, the King of first fives, hardly waif-like at 92kg.
It’s the cataclysmic nature of rugby that keeps its protagonists in the now. The physical battering they take each week is so extreme they can never look too far forward. Next week might not come for them. That’s just the way it is. When they talk of taking each week as it comes, it may well be the most annoying cliché of all, but it is the one they really mean.
It’s a week to week existence for the top professionals, not financially or contractually, but physically and mentally. They know they rely partly, more than they would ever like to admit, on luck, or fate, or higher intervention - something, anyway, that is beyond their control and determines whether they can exit the smash zone with their molecules in the same order and shape as when they entered.
Luck is not a commodity which can be stored or predicted so it is big sighs of relief and a nod to the rugby Gods every time safe passage is granted through the 80 minutes.
Professional rugby is not an ordinary existence. Not because of the fame and adulation and the public profile, more because they have this tiny window to cash in on their physical prowess. The clock ticks louder for rugby players than it does for almost any other professional sport because of the physicality of the contest.
The cruelty of the professional game has become apparent. Many young careers have ended abruptly and back in the day when players only got paid when they made selection, it was a harsh way to learn the need to have a Plan B - an exit route back to civy street that included gainful employment.
In the intervening years, education and support has vastly improved to hammer home the message that players need to be thinking about alternative careers. The transition for most is now much smoother, with few reaching the end of their playing days with no idea what to do next.
The murky part of their future is their physical well being. This is the great unknown although common sense tells us the post rugby-life for many players will be orthopedic hell. There will be an unwelcome familiarity with the cold blade of the surgeon and the relentless ache of arthritic joints.
No wonder they prefer to live in the now. The future, physically and maybe even emotionally, is not terribly appealing for many of our best players.
Many will need joint replacements. Many will suffer chronic pain that won’t be able to be fixed. Some will struggle to accept their new lives as non-professional rugby players. The thrill of the big game; the adulation of the crowd; the media profile; the kudos; the money and the camaraderie of the changing room – all of that will be gone.
Former Auckland and Blues halfback David Gibson is one to have experienced the cruelty of the sport. At just 26 he was forced to give it all up.
A neck injury, where he suffered a herniated disc, had to be operated on in 2005. It was unsuccessful and he faced a choice – more surgery or call it quits on his playing career. He chose the former and after 30 months, he finally made his comeback. But it didn’t last long. He took another blow to his neck in 2007 and that was it – the decision was made for him.
He couldn’t keep playing, to do so would have risked permanent disability and life in
a wheelchair.
“I can look back now and say I am proud of what I achieved as a rugby player,” says Gibson. “But at first you really miss it, you still want to be out there and it took me some time to realise that I was never going to be back out there playing again.
“The hard part of the transition was feeling like a rugby player but no longer being one. There is quite a lot of kudos that comes with being a rugby player and I had to have a man in the mirror moment to get everything into perspective and understand that I had to move on.”
Cut down in full flight in his mid-20s, it’s not an easy argument to make that Gibson is acquainted with Lady Luck. But he left the sport with his mobility and while his neck is not strong enough to play rugby, it is strong enough for just about everything else.
By retiring at 26, Gibson’s body has escaped thousands of punishing hours. The average full-time professional in New Zealand probably clocks up 500 hours of team trainings in a season.
The match statistics tell us that the top performers in Super 14 make in excess of 200 tackles in a campaign, carry the ball more than 200 times and clean-out more than 200 rucks. That is an enormous of amount of contact for the body to take and then there is the size and power of the athletes to consider.
The human body, even those supremely conditioned and prepared, was not designed to withstand being put through what the top players put themselves through. There is almost no doubt that our superstars of today, will be hobbling around in 10 to 15 years time.
“I do,” says Blues medic Dr Steve Kara when asked if he fears for the players of today. “I think there are going to be some who have degenerative joint diseases whether it be shoulder, knee or lower back. We are going to see a lot of these guys struggle with arthritis and needing surgery at a young age
“The high intensity, high collision points have made shoulder injuries much more prominent since I first started this job. It’s all to do with guys trying to move bodies around the breakdown area at high speed.”
In the normal world, doctors advise people with injuries to not play contact sports. It is of course a little different when the contact sport is the means by which the patient earns his living.
With the option of not playing taken away, Dr Kara says his job and that of the other support staff is to prepare the players to ensure their joints and muscles are as strong and flexible as they can be.
“We can look at pre-hab which I think is huge in terns of preventative conditioning. We put a lot of emphasis on this. We have to look at those guys who do have hammered joints and ask what we can do to protect them as best we can. Then after that it is just collision, impact and luck.
“In terms of my working week, it is a case of going into survival mode on match day and the next day it is about sorting out what is playable and what is not. It is about determining whether any players have injuries that will need scans and could be out for weeks, versus those guys who could probably train later in the week.”
Kara and his colleagues are the micro picture. The macro picture is owned by the game’s administrators who determine the structure of the landscape.
For years coaches and player representatives have called for the season to be shorter. They want to see fewer tests and for players to be afforded at least 10 weeks between seasons. In the early days of professionalism, the All Blacks were playing 10 tests a season. That crept up to 12 and in 2008 it hit 15 with 14 in 2009 and 14 planned for 2010.
It’s not rocket science – if the players have to play less, they have to train less and the chances of post career damage are less. It’s a battle they can’t win, though.
The need for money overrides and broadcasters, who stump up most of the cash, have hours of blank time they want filled and rugby is perfect.
The campaigning continues but the likes of Rob Nichol, who heads the New Zealand Rugby Players Association, has to also focus on making sure the existing situation is managed.
The NZRPA have been relentless in pushing their messages about player welfare and not flogging athletes and the level of compassion and understanding in New Zealand rugby circles is higher than in many other countries.
That doesn’t mean everything here is going to be okay. It means, hopefully, that with sensible handling of injuries; with good education around nutrition and post-match recovery; good medical knowledge and advice about conditioning and pre-hab as well as re-hab when it is required and an empathetic approach from coaches – the chances are better that Kiwi players will not suffer as badly when they retire as some from other countries.
What would help Nichol and others, would be gaining a good handle on what life is like for those players who have been involved in professional rugby and already retired.
The NZRPA is trying to track down all its alumni to participate in an extensive research project that will help build a picture on the emotional, physical and financial well-being of those who have played professionally.
“The thing we would really like to do is more research,” says Nichol. “A study has been completed in Ireland and there have been plenty done by the NFL.
“Last year we had our first medical conference that brought together a huge number of relevant people to discuss the issues and a number of work streams have come out of that. We have come a long way but we still have a long way to go.
“We still see in our own annual surveys that there are numbers of players who believe they are under pressure to play when they are injured. And we still need better education.
“Education can really help. In the past there have been examples of players who maybe took a head knock during a game and were concussed but kept it to themselves because they didn’t want to risk not playing the following week.
“Now that is less likely to happen. Most guys now would put their hands up and say what happened and that is the result of talking and educating on the dangers of head injuries and the need to disclose them.”
Nichol says he and his team have tracked down around 100 former players and are hoping for a few more before they collate the results and draw what will be a fascinating picture. That research will tell us much about the toll the professional game is taking.
Most players don’t want to think about life after rugby in terms of how their bodies will be holding up. If they spent too long thinking about it, they might talk themselves out of the career they so desire.
Live for today is the unsaid motto of the professional game – and God help them when tomorrow comes.

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