A broken-down footy player writes
PLUS: Weekend wrap travels all the way to Tennessee, via Eden Park and Christchurch
Shane Christie has spent a lot of time getting angry since he was forced to retire from rugby in 2018, aged 32, due to post-concussion symptoms.
When his great mate Billy Guyton died, he got even angrier.
Then he started thinking.
Then he started writing.
Shane has put together a poignant document, his story, that deserves to be read and understood. It is a confronting story with some excruciating detail. It is a big piece in the puzzle as Shane tries to (re)construct his post-playing life.
With his permission, I have lifted portions of it. The following words are in his hand (unless italicised) although I have abridged and lightly edited it for style and clarity.
***
It was December 21, 2023, when once again I found myself dealing with the lingering effects of concussions. For the previous five months, I had been experiencing symptoms such as pressure, fog and headaches. Determined to recover, I sought advice from a trusted source, Royce Willis from the Dizziness Clinic.
Royce, a former All Blacks, shared vital information on how to heal from brain trauma, which prompted me to begin a sleeping protocol. At 10.30am, I pulled back the blankets on my bed, ready to rest my brain for a much-needed fifteen minutes. To my surprise, I discovered that a 45-minute nap was precisely what I needed to temporarily clear the discomfort in my head.
Over the course of the day, I repeated this sleeping routine four more times before 7pm. By the time the evening rolled around, I was completely exhausted and ready to retire for the night at 10.30pm.
It took three weeks of resting my brain in this way until I noticed subtle improvements.
The fog I experienced started to dissipate, and I woke up with less pressure and stabbing pains. It felt like hundreds of diggers with shovels and picks were working to aggravate me throughout the day, distracting me from my thoughts and focus.
Napping at 10am might sound more like the life of an elderly person or a newborn, but it was my reality. At 38 and seven years into my retirement from rugby due to multiple concussions, I've had many setbacks, including boom-and-bust cycles, mostly caused by overexerting myself and working too much.
This is a personal story of my journey and recovery, and also the emotional effects I experienced while learning of my friend Billy Guyton’s death following his own tragic personal experience with post-concussion symptoms.
As I approached the end of the fourth week of my sleeping protocol plan, I realised the importance of discipline and consistency. These were skills I had honed during my rugby career, but now that my playing days were over, I found myself questioning whether all those years of dedication to the sport were truly worth it.
To maintain consistency and stick to my sleeping protocol plan, I needed to shift my mindset into a different state than what it was used to. This felt like living in a motivated but depressed and sombre state, with the desperate hope and goal of achieving three symptom-free days in a row, and a distant vision of someday being healthy again.
The road ahead was long and uncertain, but I held onto the hope that, with time and persistence, I would eventually find my way back to a life free from the constraints of my concussion symptoms. I’ve always been driven by ambition and the desire to progress in life, but to achieve my goal of regaining my health, I had to adopt a mindset that was the opposite of assertive action. Slowness and patience are not my natural strengths, and I found it challenging to adjust to this new approach.
My concussion symptoms had significantly worsened since [Billy died] on May 13, 2023. From May to September 2023, I exhausted my brain’s energy and cognitive capacity, pushing myself to a point where I became delusional and paranoid.
Despite these challenges, I decided to help Mel Bosman in coaching her and Billy’s Mako Women’s FPC team. Their campaign ran from July to September. It was a difficult time for Mel and I [as] I had to balance my own recovery with the emotional weight of Billy’s passing and the responsibilities that came with coaching the team. I was determined to honour Billy’s memory and support Mel and the team in any way I could.
During a critical 12-day period in early to mid-September, I experienced four manic, psychotic events. These events not only exacerbated my symptoms but also became increasingly radical and difficult to comprehend.
To reflect on these events, I am immensely grateful for my dear friend Holly, who recognised that I desperately needed help. Despite her own work commitments, she went above and beyond to ensure my symptoms and emotional state did not deteriorate further. In retrospect, her actions may have even saved my life.
To help you better understand the events, I will provide a brief description of each one.
1. During a three-day recovery period at home after the Mako FPC season, I experienced a distressing event that stemmed from my memory issues. I had forgotten that I had already made adjustments to my finances two weeks prior and began to panic, thinking I had been hacked or robbed. The sudden onset of intense pain and pressure in my head caused me to kneel on the floor, clutching my temples in an attempt to alleviate the discomfort. I spent an hour consumed by negative thoughts, wandering around the house in a state of confusion and distress.
Finally, I managed to sit down and focus, allowing myself to remember I had moved my finances around myself. This realisation brought me some relief, but the intense pain and emotional turmoil I experienced during this event were clear signs of the ongoing challenges I faced due to my concussion.
2. Days later, I misplaced an important book and, in my agitated state, searched frantically for it, unable to control my emotions and thoughts. For about 30 minutes, I tore through my house, throwing boxes and bags around in a desperate attempt to find the missing book. My mind was filled with negative thoughts and I believed every one of them. Eventually, I became exhausted and sat down. Calming myself enough to focus, remembering where I had placed the book last.
I went to retrieve it and found it exactly where I had remembered. However, this event had taken a toll on my already fragile state, worsening my symptoms and leaving me with an unbearable headache that prevented me from sleeping that night.
3. Three days after the previous event, I was feeling increasingly uneasy and aware that something was not right with me. I couldn’t understand the changes in my behaviour and the strange things that were happening. During these days, I experienced new thoughts and perceptions that were completely out of character for me.
One peculiar incident occurred when I walked into my room and turned on the light. To my surprise, the bulb shone brightly. I stood there, puzzled, wondering how the light could be working when it hadn’t been functioning for a month. I paced around the house, trying to remember if I had changed the bulb myself. This event was yet another manifestation of my worsening post-concussion symptoms, further highlighting the need for me to seek help and support.
4. Twelve days after the first event, I met up with a friend in town to catch up. We chatted about life as usual, and eventually, the conversation turned to Billy. My friend asked for my opinion on a sensitive topic, and I shared my thoughts. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but as I drove home, a memory of the conversation suddenly resurfaced, triggering paranoia and suspicion about the question he’d asked me.
My mind went into overdrive, and I couldn’t stop the negative thoughts from taking over. My body filled with a surge of energy, and within seconds, I made a dangerous U-turn without considering the traffic or speed. I raced back to find my friend, but he wasn’t there when I arrived.
By this point, I was in full panic mode, irrational, and ignoring the people around me. I started to see suspicious behaviour everywhere and created a full story in my mind in real time. I headed home to call my friend, and when I finally got through to him, he mentioned that my voice sounded panicked. I forced myself to calm down and tried to make sense of the situation.
For the next two days, I couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation and my extreme reaction. I was trying to understand how I had lost control of my behaviour and emotional state so quickly. I wondered where the line between life and death was and how close I had come to it.
Shane continues, talking about the paranoia that had set in and become part of his daily life, including this poignant piece of self-analysis.
Between September and December, I watched the days fly by, frustrated at my limitations and unable to achieve anything constructive. Much like previous setbacks, I began avoiding responsibilities… The very thought of using my brain to focus was agonising. This avoidance eventually led to more trouble, financial strain and stress. Lacking education on concussion or CTE, I struggled to understand myself and felt lost. I transitioned from a rugby coach to a professional procrastinator.
Christie writes at length about the importance of understanding CTE and the definitive links between contact sport and the disease, and how the constant narrative that further research is needed before conclusions can be reached effectively shields “contact sports and insurance companies from potential consequences while leaving injured players to grapple with confusion, emotional pain, and daily struggles”.
Amidst these challenges, players like myself, Carl Hayman, Billy and many more have faced difficult questions: “Am I depressed? Am I just lazy? Is it mental health issues?” Understanding the condition has been a complex and isolating journey.
The ongoing symptoms have affected our brains in such a way that we may become impulsive and obsessive around specific goals or topics of interest.
Christie ends his story with a long tribute to Billy. It goes to some really uncomfortable places, like a distressing anecdote when Billy, while cooking, started hitting his head with a frying pan and yelling “It’s my fucking head”, when he couldn’t explain what was happening to him.
This paragraph is both beautifully expressed, and haunting.
Over recent months, I finally started to understand how Billy was not only struggling with CTE, a brain-decaying degenerative disease, but also losing the will to live due to the inability to be heard, listened to, believed, and understood. Going from a once-successful rugby player, the ideal success story among his family and friends, to five years later becoming a fragile shadow of what he once was, was a devastating change. He still had the heart of a lion, but the spirit of Billy had been lost.
The Bounce is proud to introduce K3 Legal as a partner for the Monday Mash-up for 2024. Click on the link to learn more about their legal services.
The Crusaders showed a lot of ticker on the weekend, which is just as well because the 0 and 5 side had nothing else to offer in a match that did anything but live up to its top billing.
Only the greasy conditions and extreme largesse by the Blues prevented this from being an embarrassing blowout. Some of the stats compiled at Eden Park were beyond belief. The Blues racked up 11 clean breaks as opposed to two by the Crusaders. They beat 44 defenders to 11 and gained an astonishing 665 metres whereas the Crusaders made less than 200m.
The Crusaders lost more lineouts on their throw than they won, yet kept kicking penalties to touch. Centurion Patrick Tuipulotu, returning to the Blues from a broken jaw, had a field day.
There is no scenario in which a 37-year-old former England halfback should be taking one of five plumb New Zealand starting spots. That is not an indictment on Willi Heinz’ fine career, but it is an indictment on the depth in a key position. He was badly off the pace but there was barely a Crusaders player on it.
The fact they only lost 6-26 is because there is still something in that team’s DNA that prevents it giving up.
If they can get some talent back on the park and somehow scrape into Super Rugby’s powder-puff playoff equation, they still won’t be an easy out in the knockouts, even if they look a distant fifth-best of the New Zealand teams.
Unofficial NZ-based power ranking:
Hurricanes (5-0): Win against Blues elevates them.
Blues (4-1): Need to get out of their own way to take top spot.
Chiefs (4-1): Surprisingly skittish.
Highlanders (2-3): Need to win some close games.
Moana Pasifika (2-3): Better than the Crusaders.
Crusaders (0-5): Really quite bad.
I’m trying to work out whether this Ben O’Keeffe post-match conflab with Radio New Zealand signals a new era of transparency with rugby refs. Or maybe it was just a chit-chat.
I quite like the idea of big, contentious calls being explained to the public but my preference would be for them to come from one source so even if you’re never going to get ultimately consistency in decision-making you can at least get consistency in the explanations a la Graham Annesley’s NRL briefings.
This doesn’t really seem like that sort of scenario, however, as O’Keeffe branched out into commentary on what was a pretty poor game itself.
“When we see a game, we want the game to flow,” O’Keeffe said post match. “Sometimes games present themselves like that, weather conditions, so we saw a lot of knock on decisions by myself.”
It might have been a throwaway line in a column, but veteran league scribe Buzz Rothfield’s word still carries a lot of weight among the NRL powerbrokers. Here’s what he wrote in his column in CODE Sports today.
HIGHLIGHT: Another sellout crowd in Christchurch for the Raiders-Warriors game. Surely, a second New Zealand team is a far safer and more attractive option than PNG?
As for the game itself. A good win in a so-so match. The Warriors did not try a whole lot but like last year, I expect them to add layers, particularly in attack, as they work their way into the season. They have a bunch of winnable games coming up, so it would be a good time to get on a roll.
Two amazing stories from one of the world’s toughest and most iconic ultramarathons famed for the documentary Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young.
A record five runners finished, including Scot Jasmin Paris, who became the first woman to finish, in a time of 59h 58m 21s.
The course, at Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, changes every year but covers 100 miles involving 18,000 metres of climb and descent.
It is beyond brutal. To finish, you have to be a different sort of human.
Received a bunch of interesting feedback regarding New Zealand’s depth in women’s cricket, which I hope to respond to in the near future. It’s clear this is a camp with some issues to resolve, but yesterday’s T20I win against England to keep the series alive was nothing if not unexpected and, hopefully, cleansing.
Bates comes in around the wicket and bowls Hollie Armitage. Five balls later, Charlie Dean is stumped. In between Bates holds her nerve, and at the end, England are three runs short. Their last 6 wickets fell of 25 runs, in just 29 balls.
They smiled afterwards, hugged, and laughed with each other.
It was one of those games that remind you how crazy T20 cricket can be and why it continues to grow in popularity. New Zealand had flipped the script on the English, but more importantly had shown they do believe in their game.
I was about to say that Formula One suddenly got interesting again, but only Max Verstappen retired, not because the Australian GP threw up any great action.
Still, we have a live championship, something that didn’t look possible after the opening fortnight.
Will Ferrari regret ditching Carlos Sainz for Lewis Hamilton next season?
