Teresa O'Reilly is one of three women named in the class action lawsuit. Photo: Eddie Mulholland for The Telegraph
Teresa O. Reilly was sitting in her living room when the painful realization that her brain was broken hit her.
She decided to watch the heart-wrenching documentary Onward: Rugby, Dementia and Me, about 2003 World Cup winner Steve Thompson. who has early-onset dementia and struggles to remember much of his career. O'Reilly, a former 49-cap England player, could relate to almost all of the symptoms Thompson described.
“It was an ‘Oh my God!’ moment.” My mouth was dry,” O’Reilly says. “I thought, 'Damn, that's partly me.' It was not panic, but fear. It's the same feeling when I played at international level, that guttural feeling before going out to play.”
Over the next 12 months, O'Reilly, who enjoyed an eight-year playing career for Saracens, a powerful women's team, amateur game in the 1990s, underwent a series of neurological examinations.
In March this year, aged 58, she was diagnosed with early-onset dementia and joined 295 former players who launched a class action against the Rugby Football Union, Welsh Rugby Union and World Rugby. The three organizations are accused of negligence for failing to protect players from traumatic brain injuries during their careers.
“No one did any cognitive tests when I played.”
O'Reilly represented her country at two World Cups and was England's most capped women's team when she retired in 2002, the year before Thompson played in England's historic World Cup victory, which has since been erased from his record. memory.
O'Reilly's memories of his sports career are also hazy. In fact, she readily admits that she won't remember much of our conversation in the rural Oxfordshire pub where our conversation takes place. That's partly why Jackie, her partner, is here. O'Reilly struggles to find words. Jackie, who knows her inside out, is here to help her finish her sentences.
O'Reilly has suffered many blows in head during her Saracens and England career
O'Reilly brought along a box of memorabilia from her playing days to jog her memory. The photographs, overturned and fragile, spill out onto the table. There is one that shows her at the peak of her career with a short haircut while playing for England. She is kneeling on the field with her head held by a physiotherapist. She can't remember the year or location of the match.
“It was after a really bad blow to the head in the match against France,” says O'Reilly, the first female player to take part in the lawsuit. against France. speak publicly. “The physical therapist probably asked me if I could squeeze his hand and what I could see. No one performed any cognitive tests or baseline tests for concussion. If you were stupid, you could lie about it.”
O'Reilly made her England debut in 1998, at a time when the women's game was poorly regarded by the men's game and had only a fraction of the success it enjoys today. She was as dedicated to her craft as any other male player who dreamed of becoming a professional.
On an average day, she biked 15 to 20 miles on her way to work. Her lunch breaks were filled with speed exercises and she diligently completed the strength training required to bulk up to 73kg (11lb 7lb) for the front row, where she now admits she spent years training her brain.
There was no welfare for the players. At England level, it was not uncommon for a single volunteer doctor to look after a team of 30 players. Often, medics did not show up at all, and players were often told to “run away” from concussions. “If you didn’t get it done, you wouldn’t be on the team,” says O'Reilly.
When O'Reilly retired she was the most capped England player for both men and women. Photo: David Rogers/ALLSPORT
In the run-up to the 1998 World Cup in the Netherlands, England won the tournament four times. years earlier and keen to defend their crown, brought in dedicated coach Phil Larder, a former rugby league player who was also Clive Woodward's defense coach.
Among O'Reilly and her peers, he was known as “Phil-beat-em-harder-the-Storekeeper” due to the sheer brutality of his training, but the practice of grappling brought even worse consequences.
” I I distinctly remember coming out of some of these contractions and it was like I had been run over,” O'Reilly says. “We got to the point where we almost lost consciousness.
“They dug the car into the ground so it couldn’t move. You actually want it to give a little bit, but as a front-row player you can feel the blood vessels in your neck constricting from so much effort.”
These training methods, although ruthless, have helped England reaching the semi-finals of the 1998 World Championships, a tournament in which O'Reilly suffered a serious head injury that left her weakened for several months. She doesn't remember leaving the field or flying home.
“It took me about 10 minutes to realize I couldn’t continue and had to stop,” she says. “I was sick for about a day, as if I had a hangover. I had a few weeks off, I kind of got over it and got back to training, [but] I still had dizziness. I was lifting weights and it felt like someone was hitting me on the head with a hammer.” Her health continued to deteriorate and she eventually lost her job as a project manager for a construction company.
O'Reilly doesn't know how many concussions and concussions she has suffered during her career. “I think there will be thousands,” she says. “If you had given me a million pounds, I would never have played in the front row, knowing what I know now.”
She had a successful career – honors included being named England Player of the Year in 1999 year and being inducted into the Rugby World Hall of Fame in 2002, as well as winning silver and bronze medals at the World Cup – but now she wonders if it was all worth it. .
O'Reilly was elected to the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2002. Photo: Eddie Mulholland for the Telegraph: 'I'm 58 and have the memory of an 80-year-old' O'Reilly's brain shows signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease that can only be diagnosed after death.
Eight years ago, when she first began experiencing symptoms including chronic headaches, brain fog and fatigue, doctors attributed it to menopause. Her career in elite sport was never in doubt.
It was only after she drew the “shocking parallel” with Thompson that she contacted Richard Boardman of law firm Rylands Garth, who is leading the class action. O'Reilly agreed to undergo a neurological examination.
The three-hour ordeal, during which she struggled to complete simple memory tasks, still haunts her. “That was probably the only time I broke,” she says. “I was 58 years old and had the feeling of an 80-year-old man. I don't think I'll ever recover from this shock. I went out and cried like a child. The realization that my brain was not working correctly was terrifying.”
O'Reilly's diagnosis brought some relief, but did not stop her health from deteriorating. Her headaches, which occur almost daily, got worse, as did the high-pitched screaming in her head. At home there were times when she put the kettle in the refrigerator or the telephone in the dishwashing bowl. Contact numbers have become difficult to remember.
O'Reilly, England Player of the Year in 1999, now suffers from daily headaches and high-pitched screams in the head. Photo: Eddie Mulholland for Telegraph
She no longer uses her local apartment building. parking lot because the last time she drove into it, she couldn't find the exit. There were times when she drove to work in the wrong direction, despite the fact that she had been driving there on the same road for years. She also stopped driving at night due to severe sensitivity to light.
A few weeks ago, she and Jackie went to a Dawn French concert. It was her first time in over two years doing something social. “I almost left because I couldn’t cope with the chatter of the audience and the lights of the theater while we waited for the performance to start,” she recalls. “It overloaded my brain.”
O'Reilly recently began having trouble swallowing. Now he and Jackie eat dinner in silence. Although she can treat her headaches, her mood has also become unstable. A week before our meeting, O'Reilly, an avid cyclist all her life, was trying to replace a valve in her bicycle tire. “I couldn’t figure out how to do it,” she says. “I almost crashed my bike because of this.”
O'Reilly is still able to work as an operations manager for the NHS, but in recent years the tasks have become more difficult and she has moved to a more junior role. group roles. She was forced to think not only about early retirement, but also about her own mortality.
“A lot of people will go through this on their own, without understanding or support. Jackie is my absolute rock. When I talk about going to Switzerland (where assisted suicide is legal), Jackie allows me to make that decision and respects it, no matter how difficult it may be,” says O'Reilly.
“I don’t want to be in a nursing home with someone else wiping my ass and feeding me something I don’t like. I want respect and dignity and I want to choose when it suits me. I work for the National Health Service. I know how tiring caring is.”
Former internationals Non Evans (Wales) and Megan Mutry (Canada) are also part of a concussion lawsuit against rugby authorities. With research showing that women in contact sports are more than twice as likely to suffer concussions as men and also experience more severe symptoms, O'Reilly believes there may be more former female players in her situation.
“Some of my peers won’t believe or acknowledge these issues,” she says. There is sadness in her voice. “I honestly think so. If it doesn't happen to you, it's unreal.”
Earlier this year, a 'Wall of Red Roses' was erected in Twickenham to honor the nearly 250 women who have represented England. O'Reilly can't bring himself to go see it. After watching clips of this year's men's world championships, she became desensitized to the sport, which caused irreparable damage to her brain. “I love this sport. I'm not interested anymore,” she says.
Does she want the rugby authorities to apologize? “No. I want commitment and confidence that they test players correctly and that people get ongoing support after they retire, even if it's brain scans every five years, at all levels of the game,” she says.
“That's all. there needs to be an acknowledgment that there are long-term effects if you don't understand the context of what you're doing. This is what should come of it. Do you understand that by playing this sport you could potentially experience a brain limitation? Did you plan this? Because I sure as hell didn't plan this.”
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