Underbelly of sporting psyche needs to change if concussion campaign is to be won | Brandon Jack

“Be the hungriest, hardest cunt on the field. There is a senior spot open and you fucking want it.” 29 March, 2013. I am confronted by the single-minded and unrelenting drive spat onto the pages of my old football diaries.

Hastily scrawled in black ink are affirmations and personal trademarks used in an attempt to instil a conviction so serious that it would be more at home on a field of war than a footballing surface.

Hard. Relentless. Uncompromising. Ruthless. Tough. These words appear with harrowing consistency. So too a manufactured “hatred” of opponents and a desire to be the “hardest cunt on the field”.

For me, my old diaries serve as evidence of the sporting psyche; an existence constructed on a denial so strong that it may well be labelled ignorant, and a need to control so dire that it is borderline narcissistic. Harsh, perhaps. Sobering, surely.

Though undoubtedly exacerbated by the lack of security I felt as a fringe player, and wary of speaking for all who take the field, I know that I am not alone in holding this mindset.

In their pursuit of success, many athletes equip themselves with a stern headed rejection of the reality that in every contest there is a loser, and that loser might very well be them.

We con ourselves into believing that we have worked harder than anybody else – for instance, there is one paradoxical truth I know of all football teams: that each works harder than the other. We clutch for a mastery of the narrative with iterations of “if it is to be, it’s up to me” and “drive your own career”.

The field is taken with a mind that puts the catastrophes of the future secondary to the battles of the present, and this then transcends to careers where the other end of the tunnel is always just that, the other end; one that we feel might never be reached, or at most, one that will be handled once there.

Upon entry to the “real world” – such was the way it was described during my career – I’ve spent three years decentralising the importance of sport in my life. Though still a fan, one whose eyes light up at the physicality of the contest, and a local coach too, I view the game with a healthy scepticism, knowing the damage it can do.

I keep a distance, and prevent my emotions from being dictated by footy, but when news broke of the discovery of CTE on the brain of former Richmond Tiger Shane Tuck, who passed away at only 38 years of age, my scepticism was replaced by fear.

The truth is that this news has hit closer to home than I care to admit.

I am only in my mid-20s, but of late, I have noticed small details slipping from my grasp; new names, dates, grocery items, all small things which do not throw my life into disarray but are nonetheless things I have never usually forgotten.

I am unsure if this is a result of fatigue from overworking, or a perhaps a momentary lull and a hypochondria on my part, but there is a thought I cannot escape.

A thought which simmers down below and comes from knowing that I have sustained many heads knocks over the years, knocks which left a ringing in my ears and made the lights overhead blur; knocks which made the back of my skull feel like concrete, and countless lesser, sub-concussive, knocks which I cannot remember, but am sure took place, that scientists claim may contribute to CTE.

Perhaps most worrisome of all is that I sit knowing full well that the fear I feel today would not have manifested in that younger version of myself. The one who wrote those brazen words in his diary, the one who delayed the responses to his baseline concussions tests ever so slightly to give himself more leeway should he have to come from the field, the one who wanted to be the “toughest cunt on the field”.

Though I never felt pressured from coaches or medical staff to push my body to its breaking point, I was driven by an intrinsic motivation to function at the red line.

Our safety was always the priority – my brother Kieren was very closely monitored after a concussion towards the end of his career, and yellow hats were given out very liberally to “no contact” players – but I would still sit in Monday afternoon reviews hoping that a video of me putting my head over the footy would come up. I always felt that if a clip of my unconscious body was projected onto the screen, it would have been taken as a right to puff my chest out and wear the still frame like a badge of honour.

The same drive runs through the minds of university students sleeping in the library in the final week of term, or the office worker who stays until the lights are out to meet a deadline. The only difference is that we see knocks to our body, rather than late nights staring at a computer screen, as the necessary evil of our endeavour. Though more and more, we are learning the tragic damage this does and being told we should not.

The game wreaks havoc on the body and mind, yet players hurl themselves at the contest time and time again. I have played with teammates told they may struggle to walk in old age, or that they will need hip replacements by their late-30s, or that one more knock will not only end their career, but affect their life after, and it still does little to stop the pursuit of that elixir which sports bring for so many.

For all the rewards it helps one reap, the underbelly of the sporting psyche brings a blinding addiction; one that I know I have felt.

Introducing a new concussion protocol is but one part of the framework moving forward to address CTE. So too are mindsets of players who must become aware of their own mortality before it is too late. Though I acknowledge that is easier said than done.

source: theguardian.com