Damian Hopley on the end of his rugby career: "It was like a bereavement"

Damian Hopley knows from bitter experience that being a professional athlete can exact a heavy price on the mind as well as the body. Rugby players have always been in harm’s way and Hopley discovered this as a young man 20 years ago. Playing at centre for English Premiership rugby team Wasps, he won what looked like the first three of many England caps in 1995. Rugby union had just stopped being an amateur sport and the Cambridge graduate had given up his job in the City to ride this first wave of professionalism, but Hopley found himself in troubled waters.

In 1996, playing for England at the Hong Kong Sevens, Hopley injured his knee. He saw a surgeon but he injured the knee again and nine operations and two reconstructions later his professional career was over before it had really begun. “The hardest thing is the huge dent in your self-esteem and purpose and realising that you are not a rugby player. It was like a bereavement. Your sense of worth goes out of the window. I didn’t belong any more. Your personal life then goes into freefall because you become so self-obsessed. I had a girlfriend at the time and she walked out on me. Quite rightly, because I would have been a nightmare to live with.”

At 27, Hopley began working in the media and tried to get his life back on track. He met other sportsmen including the former Coventry City footballer David Busst and the former Gloucestershire and England cricketer David “Syd” Lawrence, whose careers had also been cut short by gruesome injuries. Meeting them, Hopley says, helped give him a fresh sense of perspective.

Damien Hopley (centre) in action for England against New Zealand at World Cup Sevens match in 1993. Photograph: Mike, Hewitt/ALLSPORT

In the summer of 1998 Hopley set up the Rugby Players’ Association (RPA). “I was pissed off with the way I had been treated and that was the catalyst,” he says. There was initial opposition from the RFU and some club owners so Hopley began his project without being paid. But today, he runs an organisation that has about 700 current professional players, both men and women, and about 400 former players on its books.

Outside the sport, the perception of elite rugby players is one of steely alpha males, but the reality is often different. Several players have talked about their battles with depression, linked to the end of a career in the sport. The RPA has a new campaign, Lift the Weight, which includes a 24-hour counselling service. With chilling timing the initiative was launched in the week that Dan Vickerman, a recently retired Australia lock, was found dead at his home in Sydney. The 37-year-old had taken his own life.

Lift the Weight aims to encourage men – and not just elite rugby players – to talk about the issues. “Once people get to share the stories of their frailties it makes all the difference,” says Hopley. “Jonny Wilkinson, for instance, has been very frank about his demons.”

Damian Hopley on the end of his rugby career: "It was like a bereavement"

Female rugby player"s tragic death exhibits why girls must tackle this sport head on

The 23-yr-outdated player was tackled to the ground for the duration of a game for her crew Longton but walked off the pitch, despite some discomfort. She later on suffered a stroke very likely due to a blood clot and died a month following being harm.

Some have pointed to this as proof that females shouldn’t be playing such a rough sport.

But, with respect to Sarah’s household and close friends, I should disagree.

Yes, rugby is a get in touch with sport it is the nature of the beast. Knocks will happen and a handful of are far more significant than others. As Sarah’s teammate Lesley Thompson said at the hearing into her death: “It was just a tackle, absolutely nothing malicious or heated”.

Anyone who queries the rougher edge and suggests that girls would be much better off steering clear of rugby, is missing the point.

The reality is that we achieve so a lot more, in spades.

Sarah Chesters  Photograph: SWNS

We’re encouraged, by our coaches and teams, to search right after our bodies to stretch and problem them in purchase to avoid injury, acquire strength and consume nicely.

The teamwork doesn’t cease, ever. From instruction in the wind and rain on grim February nights to plaiting every single others’ hair on the bus to an away game. These are journeys when we shout, sing, get raucous and share cakes we stayed up producing the night before (it’s not just the staff, one particular of our star bakers is a player’s husband).

You feel ladies can’t perform nicely with each other? There’s no greater way to bust this ridiculous myth than seeing eight girls, working with each other in a pack to earn hard yards for the rest of their team.

We’re invariably called ‘butch lesbians’ and ‘man-hating hulks’.

Masculine, you say? Well, if you’d class strength, determination and a cracking sense of humour as masculine traits, we’d say: “too correct.”

There are even now too many lazy and hazardous stereotypes that surround women’s rugby. But shell out a pay a visit to to any club, and you will locate this kind of a selection of personalities, shapes, ages, sexualities, speeds and skill-levels – it’s the sport that brings us with each other.

Whether it’s busting our guts on the pitch for a single yet another, or busting our lungs singing S Club 7 songs in the showers afterwards although acquiring the mud out of our hair (3 shampoos and a rinse generally does the trick), there is amazing camaraderie that comes hand-in-hand with pushing your self to the limits in the worst climate circumstances Britain has to provide.

That is something that Sarah, who commenced playing rugby as a student at Manchester Metropolitan University, would have skilled initial hand and loved, just as we do.

Bath ladies in action  Photo: Paul Hughes

All the ladies I perform with are properly aware of the dangers involved. And they also have knowledgeable a tragic injury. Eight years ago, the team’s captain and a founder-player broke two vertebrae in her neck and broken her spinal cord. Her injuries had been life-changing. But she’s by no means blamed the sport, nor anybody concerned, merely saying it was “one of individuals items.”

In the days following her accident, she informed the crew they have to return to perform their largest rivals the following week. It was hard but they did. And they won.

I imagined of her this week, when I study a comment by Sarah Chesters’ father, right after the inquest. Michael, 65, explained that his daughter ‘loved’ rugby. “Despite her modest stature,” he additional, “she was really strong”.

To propose that ladies shouldn’t play rugby – that we are not physically capable – is to say we’re the weaker intercourse. Tragic accidents do take place in sport, as in numerous other walks of lifestyle. Only last month, 24-year-outdated Bavalan Pathmanathan died following currently being struck in the chest by a ball in the course of a regional cricket match in Surrey.

This kind of incidents need to not be taken lightly, of program. Any sports player is aware that severe damage is a real risk. But, as Sarah’s father rightly pointed out in saying how much his daughter loved rugby, it is just component of throwing oneself wholeheartedly into the game, with passion, enthusiasm and strength.

Sarah Chesters taking part in rugby  Photo: SWNS

Confident, as girls we occasionally appeal to a little concern from strangers who clock our black eyes and mutter quietly, “are you alright?”

But once they uncover out you play rugby, it problems their assumptions. It is not a bad conversation starter for your CV, too.

Player security is constantly proper at the best of the agenda. New protocols to deal with concussion are filtering down to grassroots degree from the prime tiers of the sport, with latest higher-profile circumstances – this kind of as the concussions experienced by Welsh player George North and Ireland’s Jonny Sexton – guaranteeing rapid progress.

• Rugby concussions soar by 59 per cent, says report

We have scrum caps, mouth guards, hi-tech strapping. There’s also been important advancement in sports armour for women’s bodies, which will give you even a lot more protection when you get that inevitable elbow to the nipple (ouch). All this means the game has never been safer.

England win Women’s Rugby Globe Cup ultimate   Photo: AFP

Following the achievement of the England staff in winning the 2014 Women’s Rugby Globe Cup, a lot more girls than ever are scrumming down.

The Men’s Rugby World Cup lands in England (and Cardiff) this September, with tournament organisers stating that upping participation and engagement is one particular of their key objectives. Soon after that we’ve acquired fast and furious Sevens in the Rio Olympics to seem forward to.

Yes, there are aches, knocks and bruises. There’s crying, there is laugher – most of the time in my group, it is crying with laughter.

And there are the horrible (though thankfully scarce) times, when our community has to come with each other in the encounter of heartbreaking injuries.

But in women’s rugby, there’s also determination, strength, respect and joy. And the most entertaining you could ever have. There’s in no way been a much better time to tackle lifestyle head on.

Bath Rugby Women are element of Bath RFC. Last season, recruitment and advancement of new players was so effective that a Bath Rugby Women IIs staff was formed, and will compete for the very first time in the 2015/sixteen season. New players are extremely welcome – if you would like to come and train with us, just pop along, email bathrugbyladies@hotmail.co.united kingdom or follow on Twitter @bathrugbyladies

Female rugby player"s tragic death exhibits why girls must tackle this sport head on

"Silent epidemic" of brain harm and dementia triggered by concussion in rugby and other sports

O’Driscoll, who resigned from the IRB healthcare advisory board two many years in the past in protest at its managing of head injuries, cites the therapy of his own nephew, Brian O’Driscoll, as evidence of the difficulty.

Speaking at the movie premiere last week, Alex Corbisiero, the England and Lions player, said the game’s protocols for dealing with concussion have been “laughable”.

Former players Lewis Moody and Rory Lamont have the two also named for stricter controls, suggesting the choice to return to play ought to be taken by doctors since players would be too influenced by their own occupation conisiderations.

Head injuries can enhance the risks of dementia, in specific persistent traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Although boxers had been lengthy acknowledged to be at danger of brain damage, the risk from other make contact with sports has only far more just lately turn into recognized.

Chris Bryant MP, a former amateur player, has called for a parliamentary inquiry into the way sports activities deal with the situation of concussion, warning that lawsuits above the concern could otherwise be a “real possibility”.

Such lawsuits have previously been seen in the US, the place four,500 former American football players launched a class action suit towards the NFL, accusing the league of hiding the dangers of brain injury after analysis showed that former gamers were getting impacted by CTE.

A district judge in January rejected a proposed $ 765m settlement, suggesting it was inadequate to cover all retired players who would eventually be diagnosed with injuries.

In November the Rugby Football Union set up a operating group to study the link between numerous concussion and dementia.

"Silent epidemic" of brain harm and dementia triggered by concussion in rugby and other sports