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Carisbrook, 2004; Carl Hayman (centre) would be diagnosed with dementia 17 years later (Photo: Ross Land / Getty Images; Design: Tina Tiller)
Carisbrook, 2004; Carl Hayman (centre) would be diagnosed with dementia 17 years later (Photo: Ross Land / Getty Images; Design: Tina Tiller)

BooksAugust 1, 2022

The book tackling CTE and the scandal of sports treating players as commodities

Carisbrook, 2004; Carl Hayman (centre) would be diagnosed with dementia 17 years later (Photo: Ross Land / Getty Images; Design: Tina Tiller)
Carisbrook, 2004; Carl Hayman (centre) would be diagnosed with dementia 17 years later (Photo: Ross Land / Getty Images; Design: Tina Tiller)

Trevor McKewen reviews A Delicate Game, a new book about sports and brain injury by English documentary maker Hana Walker-Brown. 

The Daily Mail described the court case launching this week as rugby’s “day of reckoning”.  Those who dismiss that as hyperbole might be best served to read A Delicate Game: Brain Injury, Sport and Sacrifice.

Released in March, this 340-page narrative nonfiction book is an excellent primer for the multi-million pound legal claim against World Rugby and two national unions (England and Wales), which heads to the courts in the UK this week on behalf of 185 brain-damaged former players, including All Black Carl Hayman.

Beautiful photo of a young woman with striking shaved head, sitting folded up on a chair. Cover of her book, dominated by title A Delicate Game.
Hana Walker-Brown is a multi-media storyteller (Photo: Supplied)

Hayman doesn’t feature in Walker-Brown’s book. But both rugby codes, union and league, are cited as sports significantly contributing to CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), which causes a slew of irreversible neurological disorders including early onset dementia.

New Zealand-born former English test captain Dylan Hartley is the first name New Zealanders might recognise. He turns up at the start of chapter two, which is titled “Play On”, via a quote from a Guardian interview in 2020.  

“If you’re hurt, get up. If you fall down, get up. Carry on kid … rugby is like that on steroids.”

What comes next is the harrowing story of 14-year-old Irish schoolboy Benjamin Robinson, who died over a decade ago from “second impact syndrome”.

It is a tragic reminder that CTE is a community-wide challenge. The elite stars capture the headlines. But for every Jeff Astle (an English soccer hero of the 1960s who choked to death aged 59 and was found to have a degenerative brain disease from heading the ball) there is a Ben Robinson.

Walker-Brown visits and interviews Robinson’s family and Astle’s daughter Dawn, a remarkable woman who saw her father die in front of her and worked tirelessly to hold English football authorities to account. The personalisation of those left behind makes this book a tough read.

A middle-aged woman weeps as she watches a screen (out of shot, in distance). She holds a young child wearing a football jersey that reads "Astle 9"At her side is an older woman, also looking devastated.
April 2015; Dawn, her mother Laraine and son Joseph watch a video tribute to Jeff Astle (Photo: AMA / Corbis via Getty Images)

Dawn Astle recounts her excruciating battle to get English football authorities to acknowledge the game’s role in her father’s premature death. It is a recurring and unsettling theme. Organisations and individuals who are more willing to turn a blind eye than confront a deepening challenge. It is even more obscene when it becomes blindingly apparent that their motivation is profit.

Hartley used the phrase “industrialised brutality” in his autobiography The Hurt, in a chapter titled “Meat”.

I thought, too, of what Hayman said in a recent interview with the Guardian: “I was a commodity.  Now I’m paying the price.”

The initial discrediting of American forensic pathologist Dr Bennet Omalu, the man who took on the National Football League (NFL) in a lengthy fight to have CTE recognised and thousands of players compensated (and was immortalised by Will Smith in the 2015 film Concussion), is mirrored in the reaction of other collision sports as they react to the inevitable.

Other than the powerful personal stories of the afflicted, their carers and family, the most striking feature of the book is the lengths sports organisations and administrators will go to in either discrediting the science or, even upon accepting it, failing to move swiftly enough.

Walker-Brown shames the officials and administrators who preferred to look the other way. It is a powerful record and testimony.

Two years before Concussion screened, the NFL settled a joint lawsuit taken on behalf of 4,500 former players for $US756 million. There have been other suits since and the total figure now paid out by the NFL exceeds $US1 billion. 

Little wonder rugby is so nervous. Three weeks ago World Rugby had to defend its concussion policies after a former member of their own medical team accused them of “playing Russian roulette” with players’ brains with the use of “unscientific” head injury assessments.

Head and shoulders shot of a male rugby player, not looking at camera, blood streaming down his face.
April 2005, Hayman heads to the blood bin during a Super 12 game (Photo: Jonathan Wood / Getty Images)

Rugby is by no means the only sport featured here. CTE is the official descriptor given to what was once known as “punch drunk syndrome” within boxing. But rugby league, Aussie Rules, football, BMX and hockey are all highlighted.

Walker-Brown covers high-profile cases in American football as well as the poignant tale of legendary Aussie Rules star Danny Frawley, who took his own life in a single car crash the day after his birthday. Frawley, 56, had CTE.

It’s not just the court case that makes A Delicate Game a book for the moment. Walker-Brown’s depth of knowledge around the science and medicine of brain injuries, combined with deep personal stories, makes this a book that parents considering letting their children play high-risk collision sports should read.

One weakness of the book is that it barely touches on concussion in women’s sport. Perhaps this is because there is insufficient data to date. But given New Zealand Rugby recently confirmed concussion rates in the female game are significantly higher than among men, it is an area that demands equal attention.

The more we learn, the more disturbing this entire topic is becoming.

‘Like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, each member is vital to the whole picture. Join today.’
Calum Henderson
— Production editor

A Delicate Game: Brain Injury, Sport and Sacrifice by Hana Walker-Brown (Hachette Australia, $37.99) is available from Unity Books Auckland and Wellington. 

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Painting of a young woman. She's naked except for strategically-placed fern fronds, and she's on a purple couch.
Painting of the author by Maria Rosa Düssler (Image: Supplied)

BooksJuly 31, 2022

The story of my body, which refuses to cooperate

Painting of a young woman. She's naked except for strategically-placed fern fronds, and she's on a purple couch.
Painting of the author by Maria Rosa Düssler (Image: Supplied)

Wellington poet and student Emma Sidnam just won the Michael Gifkins Prize for her manuscript Backwaters – the novel will be published by Text in 2023. Here, she writes about her body.

I got a plum-black eye at my first ever soccer practice. I was seven and got in the way of my coach booting the ball up the field. For half of that practice, I was forced to sit on the stone terraces of my primary school, an ice pack held up to my face. That didn’t deter me from playing for four years. Neither did my mediocrity. 

When I was eight, I was the only girl at a three-day soccer camp. Alone in the girls’ changing room, I listened to the boys laughing and felt awkward. My bag looked small and lonely sitting on the white bench by itself. The room was large, lined with stone like a cell. I resented being isolated from the boys. 

Out on the field, I excelled in the fitness exercises but struggled with the ball skills. It was frustrating because I’d wanted to prove that girls were just as good as boys at soccer. Eric, the team captain (and coach’s son), demonstrated dribbling tricks for me. His feet moved quickly like wind. My feet, naturally turned out from five years of ballet, didn’t move like that. 

Being bad at foot tricks didn’t deter me from giving my all, even though some of the boys didn’t pass me the ball. During games, I hurled myself into the action, slamming my body against the other players, using their surprise to get the ball. Some of the boys avoided tackling me, because I was a girl, and I used it to my advantage. I couldn’t dribble neatly but I could kick hard. I could attack violently. When I played soccer, I didn’t care about my body. I was invincible. Adrenaline pulsed through my whole body as I skidded through the grass, tearing up the field with my boots. Purple bruises formed like flowers on my shins, but I didn’t care.

Once, I somehow ended up at the very top of the field. It was just me and the goalie. He grinned at me nastily, confident that a small Asian girl couldn’t get past him. I booted the ball with every ounce of strength I had. It smacked him straight in the guts and he fell to the ground with a yell. My smile was the size of the sun. At the end of season BBQ, every player got a little plastic trophy. Mine said “best tackler”.

Photo of young woman in her bedroom, standing front and centre, looking straight down the barrel. She wears bronze eye makeup and a velvet dress.
Best tackler (Photo: Supplied)

My primary school separated boys and girls for the puberty unit. Boys were funnelled into one room to learn about wet dreams, pubic hair and unwanted erections, while girls were streamed into another room to talk about periods, sprouting hips and breast development. 

These things will happen to you, we were told. There is nothing you can do about it. 

The classes were fun. We got put into groups of four where one of us had to lie on a large piece of paper while the others traced her. After that, we drew all the female puberty changes we knew. We drew lemon-shaped boobs, pubes like wires, vulvas like little ovals filled with holes. 

We wondered aloud what the boys were doing. We’d been shown cartoons that taught us about the embarrassing nature of breaking voices and poorly timed erections. We talked about how those were annoying, but not as bad as periods. 

At the end of the unit, we were presented with our own little purses of pads and tampons. A consolation prize for incoming adulthood. We showed the boys and they scattered as if we were holding viruses.

I waited for my body to change with a heavy dread. I didn’t want breasts. I didn’t want a period. But biology made it inevitable, and my body changed like a season. By year six, I had to wear a white crop top under my shirt. My first crop top was white with little silver studs. It felt cumbersome and embarrassing, the little pricks on my chest something to hide from. 

In year five, the first of my friends got her period. Girls crowded around her at morning tea, flooding her with questions: does it hurt? Is it heavy? Do you use tampons? She presided on the stone terraces like a queen, older than us through experience alone. 

My first period arrived when I was 12, the average age. I was at Sylvia Park with mum, trailing behind her as we went from shop to shop. That day, I was in a terrible mood. I wanted to be anywhere but there. When we finally got home, I found blood in my underwear. It was only a thin trail of red, but my grumpy mood transformed into sad acceptance. So, this was adulthood. 

Body hair sprouted under my arms like unwanted weeds. I bought my first pink plastic razor and uncomfortably shaved the follicles off, determined to prune my body into submission. But it kept growing, thick and coarse like flax. 

I can cut it off, again and again. It will keep growing back.

Photo of a teenaged girl standing in front of a bathroom vanity, looking back over her shoulder at the camera.
The author at 14 (Photo: Supplied)

Just before the first lockdown, my gut started inflating like a seedpod. My body filled with harsh, heavy gas that pressed against the inside of my abdomen. It was constant and painful, a reminder that I had no control over anything. I had to walk around and twist my core to squeeze the gas up my oesophagus. I didn’t go to the doctor because of lockdown. Instead, I rolled around on the floor to ease the pressure. I sipped peppermint tea and prayed for the gas to go away. Sometimes I felt invaded. It was worse at night, making me feel grotesquely expanded, too big for myself.

Burping as a child was funny. This was something different. This was a violent storm in my body, a rush of euphoria when I finally got it out. The constant burping was also socially awkward. I wasn’t prepared for that. When I was with people, I had to tell them about my gut, so they didn’t think I was being rude. The frustrating thing was that the moment I mentioned burps, people thought my condition was funny. They’d give me these looks of pity mixed with amusement. I would then describe the pain in my lower back, the nausea, and the feeling like my stomach was going to split open. Only then would they lower their eyes.

My student health doctor googled “bloating” in front of me and read a list of suggestions from WebMD. It made me want to scream. I’d had the gas for two months. I’d read every single article about it. The doctor eventually told me to get a blood test. The results said everything was normal.

To see if I had IBS, I cut my diet down to eggs and kūmara for two weeks to see if nightshades, green vegetables, fruits, or FODMAP foods were the problem. Nothing worked and I began to despair. My body seemed to hate me, and it made me feel trembly and unnatural, unable to exist comfortably anymore.

Eventually, I visited a gastroenterologist who put my symptoms down to aerophagia, which essentially means excessive air swallowing. He said it was caused by anxiety and prescribed me escitalopram, an anti-anxiety medication. Nowadays, I know the names of different antidepressants.: fluoxetine, paroxetine, sertraline, citalopram. When I meet other people on medication, we trade details. It’s like we’re part of a club we didn’t want to join.

The escitalopram helps. The gas is still there but not like before. Before, when I felt my gut inflating, I had to rush home before I couldn’t move. Now, the bloating and burping is unpleasant but manageable. I still have nights when I walk around, using my hands to push against my stomach in upwards motions. It’s worse when I’m anxious.

There are so many of us with bodies which refuse to cooperate. I say this with the privilege of having an able body. Bodies are not flawless structures. Bodies are natural, and they experience all of nature’s anomalies.  

Photo of a young woman on a balcony, looks like a manky flat due to peeling paint. View of trees and buildings in background.
Photo: Supplied

There are moments when my body is worth it. 

Running in the early morning, relishing the deep ache in my calves, my thighs. 

Floating in green rivers, letting the current take me past slippery rocks, half-soaked trees. Walking hand in hand with the person I love.

My flatmate paints me naked, and I post a picture on Instagram, covering my chest with ferns from the garden. Her paintbrush transforms my body into an artwork. She makes my eyes big and thoughtful, my lips pink and soft. I put the painting on my wall and look at it when I need a reminder to feel confident. 

I would like to say I feel most beautiful when natural, my body pure like running water. I could describe my legs as roots, strong enough to carry me. I could call my eyes the deep brown of bark, the promise of water and life that comes with mud. I could tell you that my hair is black as the midnight sky. But the truth is I equally prefer myself painted. It reminds me of the little control I have. I love my hair with its pastel purple, rose pink, indigo purple, hazy daylight blue. I love my eyelids coated in bronze and blood glitter and my eyeliner as thick as dirt.

I’m learning to love my body despite all its problems. Sometimes, I step out of the shower and examine myself in the mirror. I look at the curve of my hips, the natural slope of my shoulders. I imagine viewing myself through a waterfall and I smile.

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