Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - Bonus: Carl Hayman On His New Book "Head On"

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

We talk to former All Black Carl Hayman about head knocks and his latest book "Head On"...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're joined right now over Zoom by former All Black Carl Heyman. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, no problem. It's nice to be here. Now, you've got a book out. It's called Head On. A very honest book, a tough book to write, I imagine, for you, confronting some pretty

heavy topics. What's it like to have your story out there now? Yeah, I guess it's pretty daunting. We just thought that it has to be open and honest, and especially with the topics that I wanted to cover, and there was no real point doing it otherwise. It sort of leaves me a little bit vulnerable, I guess. But I think I sort of had two choices, really. One was to just go about life and not to speak up about mainly the dementia, CTE side of things. And then I sort of felt an obligation to future players

that if I don't talk about it, it's going to affect other people. What would you say to a young rugby player getting into the professional sport nowadays? Probably that you're not indestructible. I think when you're young, you tend to have this aura of invincibility. You're sort of young and bulletproof. And I certainly thought that when I was young,

from our era, we sort of expected sore backs and sore knees and various ailments. But what we didn't give much thought to was what the repeated knocks was doing to our brains and um well it's pretty frightening um you know you talk about yourself carl hayman playing 45 games for the all blacks uh you know over many years and you can remember you know a lot of your rugby games but you can't remember what you sort of did yesterday from time to time you're getting headaches you've got you know early dementia as you say that isn't going to get any better um you just got to stop it from

getting worse right yeah yeah it's a real um daily management thing at the moment and because i sort of had explained to me that it's like you've got a bucket everyone's got a bucket full of brain energy and unfortunately yours is half full and it's got holes in it so you've got to you know really use it wisely during the day because once it sort of runs out then it literally runs out and you've got to accept it for what it is and try and do the best you can. Well, I mean the bonus is you probably won't remember that you're on our show which is a bit, if you look at it, I know there's a few negatives with this whole thing, Cal

but if you look at the positives, how many knocks do you think you took to the head over the years? Are we talking hundreds? I'd say more than the thousands. Wow. You know, I just, I don't know, 20 to 30,000 just as a guess. Wow. That is frightening when you look at it like that.

Have you got two kids, Carl? I actually have double that. I have four. Four kids. Would you let them play rugby or do you let them play rugby? Well, you actually talk about that in the book briefly, don't you? Yeah, quite possibly. Ironically, I can't remember.

But they play football at the moment. If they wanted to play, I'm quite happy with them to play. I don't think kids rugby is actually where the issues are. So if they wanted to play, I'm quite happy with them to play. I don't think kids rugby is actually where the issues are. So if they wanted to play, I'd support them. I think as if they got older and got into a bigger level of rate, a higher level of rugby, then I'd certainly

just have some open conversations with them that they need to look after themselves. Now Carl Heyman with us, he's got a new book out. It's called Head On. I mean, you talk about the book, a very honest book. You talk about rugby, dementia, alcohol, domestic violence.

So these are some pretty heavy topics. But through it all, I guess at the end, I've managed to flick through some pages, but you talk about hope and a story of sort of hope. How did you find hope throughout all the things you've been through? Yeah, I guess sometimes in life you've got to you've got to reach uh rock bottom to um you're the only way to sort her up if you can have more good days than bad days then um that's a huge positive and like i said i've got four four young kids and dealing with something like this sort of puts things in perspective as well that you that you want to try and spend as much time as you can with them

and doing things with them because you don't really know what the future holds. You're going to help a lot of people with this book, and being so open and vulnerable, as you used the word earlier on, I think it'll help many. You're doing it for the greater good, Carl, so congratulations. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, awesome to see us.