Eleven months ago three former rugby union players told stories that horrified those who love the game. Steve Thompson, 43, said that though he played for England’s World Cup-winning team in 2003 he had no memory of that Saturday evening in Sydney. Sometimes he even forgot Steph’s name. Steph is his wife.
Thompson has been diagnosed with early onset dementia and probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease. Around the same time the former Welsh flanker Alix Popham, 42, revealed he too had early onset dementia and probable CTE. Popham played 33 times for his country, his last Test coming against England at Twickenham but for all he remembers of it, it could have been against Russia in Siberia.
Michael Lipman, 41, had played for Bristol, Bath and England. He was diagnosed with mild dementia. Like Thompson and Popham, Lipman suffered from mood swings, migraines, memory lapses, moments of uncontrolled anger. All three had suffered multiple head traumas and concussions during their careers, as so many rugby players do.
“We knew our bodies were going to be in bits when we retired,” Popham said. “But we had no clue our brains were as well.” All three signed up to a lawsuit against World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union. Their case rests on the contention that rugby’s authorities knew enough to have better protected them.
More than 150 rugby union players have come forward. The number continues to rise. Last week the former All Black prop Carl Hayman, 41, became the latest high profile former player to reveal that he, too, has early onset dementia and probable CTE. Chronic headaches, mood swings, suicidal thoughts, memory problems, uncontrolled anger, Hayman presented the same symptoms as the others.
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In one moment of out-of-control anger, Hayman’s behaviour resulted in a domestic abuse case against him. He told the journalist Dylan Cleaver that he’d thought long and hard about speaking publicly about his dementia. “There will be a lot of guys out there who haven’t come forward. We need to let them know they’re not alone.”
Who are the nameless ex-players, fearing now for their futures and feeling? Do we count them in their hundreds? Or their thousands?
Tim Cowley slows his white people carrier as we pass Château Petrus in the heart of Bordeaux’s wine-producing region. He knows these roads like the back of his hand. “This Château is one of the most famous in the world,” he says, “11.4 hectares of blue soil that produces some of the best wine you’ll find anywhere. Three years ago a 20% stake in this Château was sold for €200m, which works out at €87m per hectare.”
Far from Waikato on New Zealand’s north island where he was born and raised, this is now home and life revolves around his French wife Marie and their boys, the twins Raphael and Leo and younger brother Jules. He has built Rustic Vines into a successful company that organises wine tours. “The thing about really good wine is that once you’ve tasted it, you can never drink anything else.”
Marie, a doctor, works at a medical centre not far from Romagne, the small village where they now live. They met in Bordeaux nine years before, on the weekend of the Leinster v Clermont Heineken Cup semi-final. He was a recently retired professional rugby player, looking to get his business off the ground. She was a young medic and a Clermont fan.
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You look at Cowley; his family, his home, his transition from rugby and you’d say he’s got it made.
Here in a room less than a mile from Romagne, Cowley tells the story of his life. Not as it seems but as it is. He was 25 when he left New Zealand. The plan had been to spend a year overseas, working and travelling and playing a little rugby. For as long as he could remember, the game had been his life.
Zeke, his dad, is Samoan. His mum Lesley, a Kiwi. On holidays in Samoa, they called him Palagi, meaning foreigner, not one of them. He didn’t feel European and wasn’t allowed to feel Polynesian. On the rugby field he showed them who he was. There, he could be somebody. “I loved the feeling of hitting someone hard. I’d be chomping at the bit. Stopping a rival in his tracks, it was addictive.
“I wasn’t that big but the tackles we put in were huge for kids. It takes a certain kind of bravery to do that, you are risking everything when someone’s running at full pace. After you made that hit, you got recognition and that’s what I wanted. If I stopped someone with a good tackle, the fans showed their appreciation and I liked that.”
Cowley was good. He was selected for a Nike Youth team that toured the US and Canada. Carl Hayman was tighthead prop on that team, Cowley was the No 7. By then he had signed for North Harbour and played for their U 21s. He played three times for Samoa without ever quite making it at the highest provincial level in New Zealand.
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From early teenage years, bangs to the head were part of the deal. “The first time I was concussed, I would have been 11 or 12, playing for the school. I remember it because I spewed up after it happened. I was really sick on the pitch and came off only because it was so severe. It was the only time I got physically sick. One year at North Harbour there were a lot of concussions and I took a cognitive test but there was nothing to compare it to.”
He recalls a conversation with a team-mate on the North Harbour U 21 team. “He was a flanker and getting the same kind of knocks I was getting, where you’d flip from reality to feeling dazed and your head vibrates. You stayed down for a few seconds because if you tried to stand, you wobble. He said he was getting those every game, as I was.
“We thought it was normal. Concussions were when you got knocked out. The normal bangs just made you a bit dazed and blurry and after a few seconds you’d be able to get on with it. We had no idea there might be long term consequences .”
He came to England in 2003 and began his life here in Manchester. A carpenter, his plan was to get a full-time job and play part-time rugby. “I ended up working for a company that fixed council estate houses in Moss Side. It was a depressing job, up at 6am, terrible conditions, terrible pay. That part of Manchester was rough. Playing for Manchester rugby club, we were getting beaten every weekend.”
After a game against the Cornish Pirates, he was asked if he’d be interested in a move to Penzance and play as a full-time professional. He would spend four years in Cornwall and loved every moment. He became the team’s best player, earnt a contract with Bourgoin in France’s Top 14. The concussions though kept happening.
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In his final year with the Pirates he captained the side. Early in a game against Exeter he smashed the centre Junior Fatiolofa and then before halftime, Fatiolofa got his own back. Cowley was knocked out. “When captaining the Pirates, I wanted to lead by example. To say to the players this where I’m willing to go. I remember the video review. ‘Can you see what your captain’s done?’ our coach said.
“‘Got knocked out and look at the next ball, kick-off, and he’s running it full bore back at them. See how much commitment he’s showing.’ I was sitting there feeling good because that was the kind of leader I wanted to be.”
No one knew or understood enough about concussion. No one cared enough about the consequences. Certainly not Cowley who always wanted to get up and get on with it. It would be the same at Bourgoin where he signed a two-year contract and stayed for three. Then in 2011, at the age of 33, he retired from professional rugby and began a successful transition into business. Inside his head, things weren’t good.
“There were times when I felt depression and you’re thinking this relates to the loss of rugby. That’s what I put it down to. I started getting headaches in the morning, it was like someone putting a needle on the right side of my brain.
“There were problems with my memory and that’s pretty scary. I’d come home from work and Marie would ask about my day and I’d try to recollect what I’d done. After that I’d be anxious, thinking my wife’s going to ask me about how my day went and all I’d be able to say was ‘fine.’ She’d say ‘did you get to see that person?’ What person, and I would have to change the subject. I know it scares her and it terrifies me.”
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The bouts of uncontrolled anger almost crushed him. “For no real reason I would get into a rage and break stuff. Afterwards I’d be exhausted. The anger left me with a horrible feeling of guilt. I’d wonder what kind of person am I? Have I become this monster? I’d get really angry at myself for being so angry. It got to the point where my wife was scared to leave the kids with me. She was afraid because she’d seen how angry I could get.
“There were dark times. I have thought about putting the foot on the accelerator, running into a truck. I couldn’t do it to my kids. And I couldn’t do it to my wife. I don’t know if I’ll still be alive if I don’t have my wife. That’s the truth. Things have improved, I’ve learnt to manage the anger, to retreat to a quiet place when it comes. Over the last six months I’ve stopped having thoughts about wanting to end my life. That’s because of my family.” For a long time, Cowley blamed himself for the anger and tried to believe it related to his dad and a tough-love upbringing. Marie still thinks this may be the case. Tim knows it’s not.
He’s read the accounts of other rugby players and their stories and they all mirror his. The fury, the guilt, the suicidal thoughts; they can all come with the territory of traumas suffered on the rugby field.
For years he’d blamed himself, convinced that the anger made him a bad person. And for years he couldn’t speak about it. He said that while reading Steve Thompson’s story 11 months ago, he realised it wasn’t his fault. The future still scares him. “I see people coming out telling how bad things are for them and I’m thinking I’ve had a lot more bangs than him. How bad am I going to be? I don’t want my kids to have a father who doesn’t even remember them. I’ve told Marie you’ve got to help me die if it gets to that.”
He’s trying to live in the moment and not overthink the future. His life, he says, is good and he doesn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. Most of the time he is a normal and loving father and husband.
On Wednesday evening Marie cooks dinner because her godfather Pierre Francois Bardotti and his friend Jules Boissière have come to visit. They were close friends of her late father and, in their honour, she opens a 2003 Pauillac from her dad’s collection. And Cowley, the Kiwi, could not be more at home.
For years he had no idea to whom he could turn. Eventually he found Richard Boardman, the lawyer who has been helping Thompson, Popham, Lipman, Hayman and many others. He told Boardman he needed to find out precisely what damage has been done to his brain. For far too long he’s been living in the dark.
To today’s generation he offers one sliver of advice. “You’ve got to get out of the game when the medical advice says you should.”
I call by his place in Romagne on Thursday morning to say goodbye. “I’ve just got a message,” he says. “The scan is scheduled for London on December 6.”
He is smiling, and hopeful.
