Carl Hayman: Star All Black diagnosed with early onset dementia
This article is sourced from an exclusive by Dylan Cleaver
For a long time, Carl Hayman didn’t know whether he needed the complication of a high-profile lawsuit in his life, but ultimately he believes the battle for rugby’s future is urgent.
The 46-capped All Black, once the finest tighthead prop in the world, believes the way the sport is structured and administered needs to change, and if legal action provides some impetus for it, then he’d thinks he’d be letting the side down if he stood on the sidelines.
Likewise, as well as the decision to sue World Rugby and the RFU, the former Highlanders, Toulon and Newcastle Falcons player, wrestled whether to go public with the news but decided his message was too important not to share.
“There will be a lot of guys out there who haven’t come forward. We need to let them know they’re not alone,” Hayman, once the world’s highest-paid player, exclusively told New Zealand rugby journalist Dylan Cleaver.
Hayman has played close to 450 games of professional rugby but as his career wound down he has spoken of the ceaseless headaches that plagued him and sent him into a spiral of alcohol abuse and frequent suicidal thoughts, culminating in a suspended prison sentence in France after admitting to charges of domestic violence.
“I spent several years thinking I was going crazy. At one stage that’s genuinely what I thought. It was the constant headaches and all these things going on that I couldn’t understand,” Hayman said.
The 41-year-old now has an explanation. He received a shocking diagnosis after extensive testing in England that included a brain scan that can identify changes in the brain’s white matter.
He’s been diagnosed with early-onset dementia and probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive brain condition which has been strongly associated with former NFL players and boxers.
Now living in New Plymouth with partner Kiko and their young daughter, Hayman has joined the lawsuit being prepared on behalf of 150 former professional rugby players, including England’s World Cup-winning hooker Steve Thompson, former Wales No8 Alix Popham, and Michael Lipman, who played 10 tests as a flanker for England.
The landmark suit claims rugby’s governing bodies, including World Rugby, failed to protect players from the risks caused by concussions and sub-concussions, despite being armed with the knowledge and evidence to do so.
World Rugby has understandably declined to comment on the lawsuits but has responded in the past with a broad statement: “While it would be inappropriate to comment on possible legal proceedings, everyone in World Rugby has utmost respect for the wellbeing of all our players, including former players.
“Player welfare is our top priority and, along with our unions, we are unwavering in our commitment to evidence-based injury prevention strategies, in particular in the priority area of concussion education, management and prevention.”
Hayman, a father of four, said he agonised over the decision to take action.
“I um’d and ah’d for about 12 months about whether I’d do anything about it and find out if something was wrong with me, or whether I would just get on with life and hope for the best.
“It would be pretty selfish of me to not speak up and talk about my experience when I could help a guy in New Zealand perhaps who doesn’t understand what’s happening to him and has no support network to lean on.”
He added: “The other side is to hope that players of the future don’t fall into the same trap I did – that they’re not treated like an object and are looked after better.
“These younger aspiring players need to know what they’re getting into and there needs to be more support and monitoring around head injuries and workloads if they do decide to play professionally.
“I’ve even come across people who have been affected having just played school and university-level rugby, so it’s a conversation that needs to be happening with parents and teenagers at the very start.”
Hayman played 441 first-class or professional games in a 17-year professional career, a body of work he is “100 percent” certain has contributed to his illness – in which time it’s claimed he could have taken 150,000 subconcussive blows.
“There’s no doubt. We’re talking about more than 400 games of professional rugby and that doesn’t include training,” he said.
“From the age of 15 when I made the New Zealand Under-16s, I’ve played a phenomenal amount of rugby and taken a phenomenal amount of knocks to the head. CTE isn’t about concussions but about the ongoing knocks in games and trainings.”
Hayman said he remains frustrated by the refusal to make fundamental changes to the sport’s calendar.
“When I first started playing pro rugby I remember having a Players’ Association meeting and the conversation was all about having a global window and a shorter season,” he said.
“We’re still having the same conversations about rugby now. There’s a number of changes we can and have to make to help protect the players of the future.
“I look at the NFL again and they have a 17-game season across four-to-five months with the possibility of a couple of playoff games. You compare that to rugby with a 10-month season.
“There needs to be a discussion about what constitutes an acceptable volume of rugby.”
As evidence of this Hayman points out that whilst with Toulon he racked up a staggering 156 matches in five years.
“Basically, if I was fit and available, I was on the field,” he says.
“There were times that I probably shouldn’t have played but it was expected – like when I had a root nerve anti-inflammatory injection in my neck during the week and was back on the pitch at the weekend. They worked us hard and I never complained. It was my job and I was paid well, but I doubt it did any favours.
“In hindsight, as much as I enjoyed it at the time, I don’t think doing that week after week for 10 months of the year did much good for me. At the time I felt indestructible. I never got injured, I trained bloody hard. I literally felt that I was indestructible, but if I knew then what I know now, I don’t think I would have played post the [2007] World Cup. I think I would have stopped playing.
“I’m 41, I've still got a massive part of my life ahead of me and when you live with something like this it certainly makes every day a challenge.”
These challenges started before his career was over.
Hayman had started to experience frequent episodes of déjà vu on the field, which he found bizarre and unsettling. He didn’t know it at the time, but that would have been of great concern to a neurologist, as chronic déjà vu can be a symptom of dementia.
When he joined Pau as forwards coach in 2016 his life started to spiral.
“The headaches were the start, and they were something that kept getting worse over time. Waking up daily with a constant headache at various levels that never really goes away,” he said.
“I started having substantial memory issues. I was trying to get a passport for my son and I couldn’t remember his middle name, which was a significant moment.
“I was searching around for it in my mind for a good 25 seconds and had to go, ‘I’m really sorry, I’ve forgotten’, to the person on the phone trying to do the passport. ‘I’ve forgotten my son’s name’.
“I had temper issues, definitely, and then at this point of my life, it led down the track to what I’d consider alcohol abuse. I always enjoyed a beer with the boys but at this point I began drinking more.
“I didn’t know what was going on and the drinking brought a little bit of an escape for a certain amount of time. It would temporarily alleviate the symptoms somewhat but then, as you can imagine, the next day things would be back to how they felt before, if not worse. It was a vicious cycle I got caught in.”
Unsurprisingly this spiralled and Hayman suffered a serious bout of depression and regular suicidal thoughts crept in. His marriage was collapsing under the strain and he was involved in a physical incident with his ex-wife, behaviour he deeply regrets.
Hayman writes down anything important now, and jokes that his partner Kiko Matthews is in charge of telling him where his wallet and phone are.
Kiko said: “It’s important that Carl, who has worked very hard for 20 years and now has a serious injury as a result, gets to enjoy his life.
“It’s sad to think that you work really hard for your team and country and then end up permanently and progressively brain damaged.”
The couple are hopeful that advancements in medical science and therapies will slow down dementia’s inexorable march.
As a side note there is no legal avenue to take action against New Zealand Rugby, due to our ACC law that offers no-fault insurance for personal injury and removes the right to sue.
Richard Boardman of Rylands Law, representing the players, said: “Across the sporting world, you have retired athletes with serious brain damage left to contemplate an uncertain retirement undiagnosed with little support. The sports can celebrate the core physicality of game day, but do much much more around that to look after those participating.”
“We’re still having the same conversations about rugby now. There’s a number of changes we can and have to make to help protect the players of the future.”