Teresa O’Reilly was sitting in her living room when she became painfully aware that her brain was broken.
He decided to watch Back to Top: Rugby, Dementia and MeA heartbreaking documentary about 2003 World Cup champion Steve Thompson, who suffers from early-onset dementia and struggles to remember much of his career. O’Reilly, a former 49-cap England prop, can relate to almost all of the symptoms Thompson describes.
“It was an ‘Oh my God’ moment. My mouth went dry,” says O’Reilly. “I thought, ‘B— damn, some of this is mine.’ It wasn’t panic, it was fear. “I had the same feeling when I played internationally, that guttural feeling before I go out to play.”
Over the next 12 months, O’Reilly, who had an eight-year playing career at Saracens, a powerhouse of women’s amateur football in the 1990s, underwent a series of neurological tests.
In March this year, aged 58, he was diagnosed with early-onset dementia and joined 295 former players in launching a class-action lawsuit against the Rugby Football Union, Welsh Rugby Union and World Rugby. Three institutions are accused of negligence for their failure to protect players from brain injuries throughout their careers.
‘No one did any cognitive testing when I played’
O’Reilly represented his country in two World Cups and was England’s most-capped player, both men and women, when he retired in 2002, a year before Thompson played in England’s historic World Cup victory that has faded from memory. .
O’Reilly’s memories of his own sports career are also hazy. In fact, he readily admits that he won’t remember much of our conversation in the rural Oxfordshire pub where our conversation took place. That’s partly why his partner Jacky is there. O’Reilly is struggling to find words. Jacky, who knows her inside and out, is here to help finish her sentences.
O’Reilly brought a box of memorabilia from his playing days to jog his memory. Fragile photos, broken by thumbs, spill onto the table. There is a photo showing him at the peak of his career, sporting a short haircut during an England match. He is kneeling on the field and his head is supported by a physiotherapist. He does not remember what year the match was played or where it was played.
“This happened after she took a very bad hit to the head against France,” says O’Reilly, the first female player to join the cause. “The physio probably asked me if I could shake his hand and what I could see. No one did any cognitive testing or basic concussion testing. If you were stupid you could lie about this.”
O’Reilly made her England debut in 1998, at a time when women’s football was weaker than men’s football and had a fraction of the profile it has now. He was as dedicated as the next male player who aspired to become a professional.
On an average day, he biked between 15 and 20 miles as part of his commute to work. Lunch breaks would be filled with speed workouts, and he would diligently do the weight sessions required to propel his 73 kg (11st 7 lb) frame to the front row; He now realizes that he spent years here beating his brains.
Player welfare was non-existent. At England level, it was not uncommon for a volunteer team doctor to attend to a squad of 30 players. Often no doctor came and players were often encouraged to “run away” from concussions. “If you didn’t ‘run’ you wouldn’t be on the roster,” says O’Reilly.
Before the 1998 World Cup held in the Netherlands, England, which won the tournament four years ago and aims to defend its championship, added Phil Larder, a former rugby league player and also Clive Woodward’s defense coach, to its staff as an expert coach.
He was known as the “Phil-on-em-harder-Larder” among O’Reilly and his colleagues for the sheer brutality of his training sessions, but scrimmage training took an even heavier toll.
“I distinctly remember coming out of some of these scrimmage sessions and it was like I was being crushed,” O’Reilly says. “We ran to the point of fainting.
“They dug the scrum machine into the ground so it wouldn’t move. “You actually want to give it a little bit, but as a front-line player, you feel the blood vessels in your neck constrict from the effort you’re putting in.”
Such training methods, although brutal, helped England reach the 1998 World Cup final; here O’Reilly suffered a serious head injury that left him incapacitated for months. He doesn’t remember leaving the field or flying home.
“It took me about 10 minutes to realize I couldn’t continue and had to leave,” he says. “I was sick for about 24 hours, like I had a hangover. I had a few weeks off, somehow got through it and got back to training. [but] I was still fuzzy. “I was weight training and it felt like someone was hitting my head with a hammer.” His health gradually deteriorated and he eventually lost his job as a project manager for a construction company.
O’Reilly doesn’t know how many concussions and semi-concussions he’s suffered throughout his career. “I predict there will be thousands,” he says. “If you had given me a million pounds I would never have played in the front row, even what I know now.”
He’s had a successful career – accolades include being named England’s Player of the Year in 1999, being named to Rugby World magazine’s hall of fame in 2002 and winning two World Cup silver medals – but now he wonders whether it was all worth it.
‘I am 58 years old and it was as if I was carrying the memory of an 80-year-old’
O’Reilly’s brain shows symptoms consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease that can only be diagnosed after death.
Eight years ago, when she first started experiencing symptoms such as chronic headaches, brain fog and fatigue, doctors suggested they were attributed to menopause. There was never any forward-looking questioning about his career in elite sport.
It was not until he drew the “shocking parallel” with Thompson that he contacted Richard Boardman of the Rylands Garth law firm, which is leading the class action. O’Reilly agreed to undergo neurological testing.
He is still haunted by the three-hour ordeal of struggling to perform simple memory recall tasks. “It was probably the only time I broke down,” he says. “I was 58 years old and it was like I had the memory of an 80-year-old. I don’t think I’ll ever get over this shock. I went out and cried like a child. “The realization that my brain wasn’t working properly was terrifying.”
O’Reilly’s diagnosis provided some relief but did not stem his deteriorating health. The almost daily headaches and the high-pitched screams inside his head intensified. There were times when he put the kettle in the refrigerator or his phone in the dishwasher at home. Pin numbers have become a nightmare to remember.
He no longer uses his local multi-storey car park because the last time he was in there he couldn’t find his way out. There were times when he went to work the wrong way, even though he had been using the same route for years. He also stopped driving at night due to his extreme sensitivity to lights.
A few weeks ago he and Jacky went to see Dawn French live. It was the first time he had done anything socially in over two years. “While I was waiting for the show to start, I almost left because I couldn’t stand the public chatter and the auditorium lights,” she recalls. “It was overloading my brain.”
Recently, O’Reilly began having swallowing problems. He and Jacky are eating dinner quietly now. Although he was able to treat the headache, his mood also became unstable. A lifelong cyclist, O’Reilly had tried to replace the valve in his bicycle tire a week before we met. “I couldn’t figure out how to do this,” he says. “I almost destroyed my bike because of that.”
O’Reilly is still able to work as an operations manager for the NHS, but in recent years the roles have become more challenging and he has moved into lower-level roles. He had to consider not only early retirement but also his own mortality.
“Many people will go through this process on their own, without understanding or support. Jacky is my absolute rock. When I talk about going to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal, Jacky lets me make that decision and respects it, no matter how difficult it is,” says O’Reilly .
“I don’t want to be in a nursing home, where someone else is wiping my ass and feeding me things I don’t like. I want some respect and dignity and I want to choose the right time for me. I work in the NHS. I know how masterful the care is.
Former internationals Non Evans (Wales) and Meghan Mutrie (Canada) are also part of the concussion lawsuit against rugby officials. O’Reilly believes there may be more former female players in her situation, given research showing that women in contact sports are more than twice as likely to suffer a concussion as men and also experience more pronounced symptoms.
“Some of my colleagues do not believe and accept these problems,” he says. There is a distinct sadness in his voice. “I’m really thinking about it. It’s not real unless it happens to you.”
A ‘Red Rose Wall’ was built at Twickenham earlier this year to commemorate around 250 women who represented England. O’Reilly can’t go see him. After watching clips from this year’s men’s World Cup, he became desensitized to the sport that had irreparably damaged his brain. “I like sports. “I’m not interested in that anymore,” she says.
Does he want rugby officials to apologize? “NO. I want commitment and assurance that they are testing players properly and that support will continue after people retire, even if there is a brain scan every five years at every level of the game,” he says.
“There needs to be recognition that if you don’t understand the context of what you’re doing, it will have a long-term impact. That’s what needs to come out of this. Do you understand that you can potentially limit your brain capacity by doing this sport? Have you planned for this? Because I didn’t plan it.”
