Lewis ‘Mad Dog’ Moody says newfound perspective means he would play ‘differently’ if he had his time again
This article is written by www.inews.co.uk
Lewis Moody was famously knocked out twice in a 2007 Rugby World Cup match against Tonga – but far from being removed he played all 80 minutes and featured in the quarter-final a week late.
The 2007 match, England vs Tonga on a Friday night at Parc des Princes, Moody was doing his magnificent thing, roaming fast off scrums and line-outs, chasing and tackling. The TV commentary reflects the times, with apparently uncomplaining references such as “oh my goodness, his head’s going to be battered, isn’t it?” and “his team-mates wonder if there’s anything inside there”.
In the second minute Moody is knocked out when his head collides with the knee of the Tonga full-back. Simon Kemp – then the England team doctor, now the Rugby Football Union’s head of medical services – is seen looking concerned, while asking the questions that were used to determine awareness of surroundings. Later in the first half, a Tongan lock collides with the back of Moody’s head, and he is briefly examined again. Two minutes into the second half Moody takes a high tackle from the flanker Nili Latu that would today attract a yellow or red card. Just a penalty was given, while Kemp and England’s physio Phil Pask examine Moody again. The next day he feels sickeningly disorientated on a rollercoaster ride at Disneyland Paris, but goes on to start the following weekend’s quarter-final win over Australia in Marseilles.
“There were protocols in place,” Moody says, referring to a possible stand-down of up to three weeks that was changed to a six-stage return-to-play protocol in 2011, “but they felt sketchy, they felt like something that as a player we could always manipulate.” He remembers differing approaches, such as a doctor insisting he spend a night in hospital after being knocked out playing for Leicester some time around 2000.
Moody’s father passed away with Alzheimer’s in January last year and his father’s brother has recently been diagnosed with the same condition.
“So, for me,” says Moody, “there’s an added weight to understanding this. Does the accumulative effect of having played rugby and potentially being genetically disposed to dementia form a sort of perfect combination?
“I know ‘Thommo’ feels really bitter about how it’s worked out for him, and that makes me sad, because I felt like he had a fantastic career and he loved the game when we played it, and I loved playing with him. It’s sad that we can’t share those sort of memories – literally, when we’re chatting in that documentary, it’s like it doesn’t exist.
“I suppose my initial reaction was sceptical, but now it’s a realisation of the really crap position he finds himself in and knowing how rapidly early onset dementia affects people, having seen it with my dad. Over 10 years he went from a fully capable functioning, rational human to someone that needed 24/7 care and couldn’t hold a conversation.”
Moody had an initial consultation with a doctor put forward by the lawyers, but did not proceed. Meanwhile, he wants World Rugby to put a mandatory time limit on contact in training, and for all sports to make money available for the care of players after their careers.
“I love the game of rugby,” he says. “My kids love it, they absolutely obsess about it. And they would do contact every waking second of every day, if they could. So it’s up to us to take the power out of their hands. The technical work around the contact area, the tackle technique, the scrummage, you can do that without putting the bodies in a position where you’re going to sustain a head injury.
“People may go ‘that’s really hypocritical of you, Lewis Moody, Mad Dog Moody, because you used to play like an idiot, you were insane’. Well, I wasn’t insane. I loved playing the way I did, I loved the contact element of the game, I loved the hours that we spent battering each other on the training field. I played the game within the parameters, and in the way that I could, at a time that I could. And I would do it differently now.”
“There were protocols in place but they felt sketchy, they felt like something that as a player we could always manipulate.”