Performance
A former rugby international and his wife describe repeated concussion, cognitive decline, probable CTE, addiction, marriage, and family care.
In this account, the lasting brain damage did not come from one dramatic blow but from the steady pile-up of hits taken in routine training and games. Each knock was the common, usually mild kind of injury, but together they added up to permanent harm.
Crowds and coaches expect a player to rise after every crushing blow and stagger back into play. The authors' story shows that this expectation adds to the damage, because the injured brain keeps taking hits instead of being taken out of the game.
Living with someone whose brain is failing means one partner becomes carer, peacemaker when tempers flare, sole head of the family, and support through addiction. The injury plays out across a whole household, not just inside one person.
For the injured person, losing memory brings a lost sense of purpose and growing self-doubt. The book's starkest example is a player who hoped to end his career on his own terms and can no longer remember his own moments of glory.
The authors argue that concussion has become one of the biggest issues in contact sports, even as the people running those sports work hard to minimise it. They call for change and campaign publicly to make the sport take it seriously.
The cause of the symptoms was only pinned down after retirement, years after the blows were taken. Even then the authors describe the condition as a probable diagnosis, since its signs show up long before anyone can name them with certainty.
According to the book, a form of dementia caused by repeated concussions can begin in people as young as their thirties and forties. That turns a problem of old age into one that can arrive in the middle of family and working life.
The long-term effects of repeated head knocks have only come into view in the past decade, partly through studying the brains of players after death. Understanding is still catching up, so players took risks no one could fully describe at the time.
The authors call for protocols that would spot when a player may be at risk of this brain disease, and they offer a guide to living with it. They admit that such preventive checks remain a long way off, so for now families mostly manage the damage after it is done.