Shane Christie believed that he had CTE.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Shane Christie wanted a hard look at the link between head knocks and long-term brain injury, and he asked for his own brain to be studied.
It has been described as a silent killer – a dark and devastating side of contact sport that is only revealed after death.
It is called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and it has left a trail of tragedy both here and overseas, targeting athletes who once stood strong, proud, and unstoppable on the field, but in retirement become victims of sudden personality shifts, violent outbursts, crippling depression, and memory loss.
New Zealand rugby player Billy Guyton died by suicide two years ago and was found to have CTE in a brain study carried out after his death.
Now his good mate and former Māori All Black Shane Christie, who believed he had CTE, died suddenly in Nelson last week, aged 39.
In recent years, Christie openly spoke about repeated head knocks, years of collisions, and the lingering shadow of concussion.
He was an advocate for greater focus on the damage repeated head injuries can have – particularly the links with CTE – and wanted his brain studied after he died.
Today, The Detail talks to Dylan Cleaver, sports journalist and publisher of The Bounce, who knew Shane Christie and has reported on the extensive links between rugby and head injuries leading to CTE.
Cleaver says simply put, CTE is “a progressive and degenerative brain disease that’s linked to repetitive head impacts – and the key line there, that way too many people either misunderstand or, in some cases, choose to ignore, – is it’s repetitive head impacts, not necessarily repetitive concussions”.
“There are much higher rates of dementia among professional footballers, and it’s been linked to heading the ball. Now every time a player heads the ball, they don’t get concussed obviously, but there is this head impact … the brain is shaken up.”
He says diagnosis of CTE can only be confirmed after death, but symptoms include cognitive, behavioural, mood, and movement changes.
“We don’t know if Shane [Christie] had CTE, that’s important to note … but we know, unfortunately, through his writings and his outspokenness that he certainly feared that he did have it. He would admit to having periods where he was quite paranoid.
“When Billy [Guyton] died… I think Shane saw a lot of Billy’s symptoms in himself and so he was constantly fearful of it.”
In the United States, CTE has been linked to multiple suicides among professional football players, while in the UK, former football and rugby stars have brought a nearly billion-dollar brain injury compensation case against their sports’ governing bodies.
“There are certainly New Zealanders who have played overseas and who have joined that lawsuit, including Carl Hayman, former All Black … it will have reverberations here,” says Cleaver.
“They’re saying they weren’t made aware … that the rugby authorities and league authorities knew of the dangers posed by repetitive impacts and didn’t communicate to players well enough.”
New Zealand sports bodies insist they are taking the issue seriously – rolling out new concussion protocols, stricter stand-downs, and long-term studies.
In a statement to The Detail, New Zealand Rugby says: “Shane was vocal about his struggles with concussion, which is also a priority for NZR. Player welfare is at the heart of everything we do.
“As it relates to CTE, NZR acknowledges that there is an association between repeated head impacts.
“This is a complex issue with evolving science, and NZR does not believe that a causal link between CTE and clinically diagnosed neurodegenerative diseases has been established. There needs to be far more rigorous research to determine this, and we are actively supporting this to happen.”
Cleaver has been reporting on the rugby-brain injury link for about 15 years. He says it is not just traumatic for the athlete – their loved ones are devastatingly impacted too.
“I talk to these families, and the stories are all frighteningly similar – they lost the people they loved, but they lost them before they died, that’s tough to live with.
“It’s the longest goodbye, you have this person in front of you, this person that was a hero to you, who you loved, who was father, your mother, your brother, and they just become a shell.
“It’s incredibly frustrating, it’s heartbreaking, but it’s a reality for a lot of families.”
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