BONUS: Can rugby survive its brain injury problem?

0:00David Walsh: Today's episode of The Ruck is brought to you by Allianz. They've been part of the rugby family for over 13 years now, backing the game at every level from the muddy grassroots pitches to the biggest stages in the sport. And their partnership with the home of England rugby, Allianz Stadium, isn't just about putting a name on the building. It's about backing the future of the game and the generations still to come. We're proud to have them on board. Let's get into it.

0:27Holly Parkes: Before we start, this episode contains mentions of suicide and self-harm. From The Times and The Sunday Times, this is The Story. I'm David Walsh.

0:44David Walsh: It promises to be quite a night for aficionados of New Zealand rugby.

0:49Holly Parkes: We are at The Stoop, a rugby stadium in West London, Twickenham. It's a midweek evening in November 2016.

0:58David Walsh: Well, it's been a wet evening, certainly thus far.

1:02Holly Parkes: Lots of rain, very wintry, cold. The home team, Harlequins, are playing the visiting New Zealand Maori team.

1:11David Walsh: The Maori have come to the southwest of the capital and they've brought a team brimming with quality and super rugby experience.

1:22Holly Parkes: In that New Zealand Maori team is a flanker, Shane Christie, wearing the number seven. And in the first half, which is dominated by the New Zealand Maori, Shane Christie is one of the stars. Christie, in the tradition of good number seven, has been all over the field. He scores a good try.

1:43David Walsh: And it's gone the way of Shane Christie.

1:46Holly Parkes: And then sets up a try for his teammate, Sean Wanui.

1:49David Walsh: And this time it's Sean Wynui.

1:55Holly Parkes: 39 minutes in the game. He makes a tackle, a regular, normal tackle, but doesn't get immediately up. Instead, he gingerly gets to his feet. As he's walking off the pitch, he's approached by a member of the Harlequins' medical team who asks if he's OK. Shane lifts his right arm and with the palm of his hand rubs it across the top of his head indicating that there's something wrong with his head.

2:34That gesture was the last thing

2:37Holly Parkes: that Shane Christie did on a rugby pitch and it would be followed by nine years of hell.

2:49Holly Parkes: I've been writing about rugby for 46 years as a professional journalist. I covered the first Rugby World Cup in New Zealand and Australia in 1987. I've been at every World Cup since. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that I love watching rugby. I always have. But it's also something now of a guilty pleasure. I have become far more conscious that there's another side to rugby a side that challenges the very existence of the game as we know it and it's because of this that I ended up going to New Zealand there was a story that I really wanted to pursue the story of Shane Christie and it is why I ended up in a podcast studio in Christchurch speaking with Holly Parks, who is Shane Christie's former partner.

3:51Holly Parkes: So let's begin at the beginning and go back to who you were and who Shane Christie was when you first met in 2010. And I think that's kind of where we might start. How does that sound?

4:05Shane Christie: Sounds good, David.

4:06Holly Parkes: Yeah.

4:07Shane Christie: God give me strength.

4:09Holly Parkes: He will. He will.

4:13Shane Christie: I was a 20-year-old student and Shane was 25 years old. He was a builder and he was very fun. We were both interested in partying and enjoying our lives and getting out there. And it was just after we met, he made New Zealand Sevens.

4:36Holly Parkes: And the New Zealand Sevens isn't like the All Blacks, but it's pretty prestigious. You go around the world playing for your country in Sevens competition, and it put Shane on a different level. When you first met Shane, did you see him as more builder than rugby player?

4:54Shane Christie: Yeah, he was more of a builder for me, yeah. I thought he was pretty cute with his tool belt on, and he talked about making furniture or creating lamps, and he had lots of ideas and he was good at lots of things. So I wasn't completely sure that his life would be all about rugby at this point.

5:13Holly Parkes: And when did rugby begin to become a greater part of his life?

5:18Shane Christie: In 2013, he got his first super rugby contract. And I remember obviously being super happy for him and being excited. But I also remember at some point I was crying. And he was like, why are you crying? and I was like, everything's going to be different now. I know it. Things will change. Having been selected for the New Zealand Sevens,

5:43Holly Parkes: Shane's life as a rugby player was on a different path. The builder from Nelson was in demand. When the best player in the world at the time, Richie McCaw, decided to take a year out, his team Crusaders hired Shane as a backup flanker. Being a flanker means that you're constantly involved in the game You carry the ball, you tackle And most of all you compete at the breakdown Which is the cold face of rugby Shane had really realised a dream In becoming this almost high profile professional rugby player

6:26Shane Christie: You know, he's 27 or 28 and so now he knows he doesn't have long to make a real impact. So he gets, obviously, as you would, proper tunnel vision on your career. I didn't think our entire lives would be about rugby, but for Shane, his whole life would probably be about rugby. So I wanted to know if there was hope that maybe we might live overseas or we might do other things. But I think for him, he didn't want to go overseas. He didn't want to do other things. So I started to realise that if I kept choosing this, I would have to give up quite a lot of things that I had wanted for myself.

7:05Holly Parkes: When did the relationship end then?

7:07Shane Christie: Mid-June 2015, just before they win the Super Rugby title.

7:12Holly Parkes: Which was a big deal for Highlanders.

7:15Shane Christie: Yeah. In the Southern Hemisphere, Super Rugby is the biggest deal you get outside of Test Rugby. and in 2015 an extraordinary thing happened in New Zealand.

7:30Holly Parkes: The Highlanders from Dunedin won Super Rugby for the first time. At that time Shane was a Highlanders player. They'd signed him from Crusaders and though Shane's career was going from strength to strength Holly found that Shane was so driven by rugby that their relationship couldn't last. And Holly feels that she's got to get away. Basically, do the things she wanted to do, leave New Zealand, travel. She went to Australia and through this time she stayed in touch with Shane. They would have long phone calls, they would message each other, not always regularly, but the connection was never really severed.

8:21Holly Parkes: and Holly started to discover a different Shane, a Shane that had been somehow changed by his involvement in rugby.

8:34Shane Christie: We would still speak and when he went to the hospital in South Africa after taking a big hit, he's in hospital for days after. So he calls me from the hospital to let me know that he's taken a big hit and that he's been in hospital and that he'll be coming back to New Zealand.

8:51Holly Parkes: Part of the deal of Super Rugby is that the New Zealand teams have to play in South Africa. In July 2016, the Highlanders and Shane Christie went to Port Elizabeth to play the Southern Kings. During the game, Shane got a bad blow to the head. He left the pitch on a golf cart, which you sometimes see when players are seriously injured. the Highlanders coach would afterwards explain the injury as just one of those blows to the neck the head that players get and that Shane was itching to get back and would be back as soon as he could with the team this was in stark contrast to what Shane had told Holly from the

9:33Shane Christie: hospital I remember the story of he says I wake up I open my eyes and he saw that the the person above him was crying because they thought he had died on the field. And then, you know, they take him down the tunnel and I think his eyes are rolling back and he's struggling to breathe and stuff. So he was in a really bad way and he had had quite a few concussions before that as well. So they're starting to accumulate.

9:59Holly Parkes: And were you conscious of those being anything other than just little rugby injuries? At that time, what did you think?

10:08Shane Christie: Not much. I didn't think there could be long-term consequences. I didn't think it was capable of doing what it did. Right. I didn't know that.

10:20Holly Parkes: If you hear a rugby coach speak before a game, he will say something like, we have to get our physicality right. We have to win the collisions. Rugby is a collision sport. And in any collision sport, and there are many of them, head knocks are an almost routine occurrence. The amount of collisions you're involved in in rugby depends to a degree on the position you play. And remember, Shane Christie was a flanker right there in the firing line. The concussion that he suffered against Southern Kings in Port Elizabeth came four months before the concussion. He would suffer playing Harlequins at the Stoop in November 2016, the last game he would ever play.

11:10Holly Parkes: But in truth, Shane Christie had suffered multiple concussions throughout his career. After every concussion, the one in Port Elizabeth, the one at the stoop, Shane had one driving ambition to get back on the field of play. Every time he went to a doctor, that's what he wanted to hear. Basically, Doc, how quickly am I going to get back on the pitch here? He was always kind of being told things would be OK. He believed for a long time they would, but they never were. When did he start to get worried about the effect of these concussions?

11:54Shane Christie: He said that around mid-2017, he really started to realize that what he'd done might actually cause him long-term problems and issues. He sort of had this realization of, if I'm not careful now, I think I've actually done real damage to my brain.

12:16Holly Parkes: The doctors tell him that he's got mental health issues.

12:20Shane Christie: The way that they're treating him is to basically give him antidepressants and antipsychotic meds. But he was like, it doesn't make any sense, Holly. Like, I've got concussion. I've got brain injury issues. So I know it's not going to do anything, and I know it's not the right way, but it seems like my only option at the moment. He had realized that he'd been being put through a return to play protocol, and he was not wanting to return to play. He was wanting to get better. He was wanting rehab. So this is the real shift. He starts to realize, oh, if I keep going down this river, that's not actually what's best for me.

13:00Shane Christie: I can't return to play.

13:02Holly Parkes: Yes.

13:02Shane Christie: He retired in 2018, having not played at all in 2017.

13:07Holly Parkes: Yeah.

13:07Shane Christie: Maybe he tried light training.

13:09Holly Parkes: His last concussions were training ground concussions. I think so, yeah.

13:13Shane Christie: And just very light, but then the brain's lost its resilience and is really inflamed and trying to recover from multiple head knocks.

13:22Holly Parkes: By the time the 2017 season ended, Shane knew that he wasn't going to get back on the pitch. He had tried and failed. And at 32, his career was over far sooner than he would have wanted. Around this time, Holly and Shane, although not officially back together, were seeing a lot of each other hanging out. And Holly was essentially looking after Shane.

13:50Shane Christie: This is 10 years ago now. So I'm 26, 27 years old and Shane's 32. So we're very young. And I feel that we're only just coming out of some kind of dark age of really understanding the brain as an organ. As silly as it might sound, I didn't really understand what concussion really was. how long it could last, what it could mean, and the fact that essentially it is a brain injury. I didn't know any of that. I didn't know that if we don't sort this out now, there's really dire consequences down the road.

14:27Holly Parkes: Shane isn't the only one suffering from concussions. Around this time, the world of rugby was coming to realise that concussions and brain injury and cognitive problems were a bigger part of rugby than anybody had realised. And even in Shane's small circle of friends, there was one particular friend, Billy Guyton, whose career had also ended because of his concussions. Bill, Wild Bill, as he was called, was a scrum half who had played on the same team in Nelson as Shane. In a sense, they'd grown up together in rugby. And Shane and he had a special bond?

15:15Shane Christie: Yeah, they did. They were very good friends. I don't know. Bill liked to come and bang on the glass and wake Shane up early in the morning and annoy me. So I'd tell Shane to go and they'd go off and be hooligans together. They both had retired from concussion issues. I know that they were both dealing with this and being a support system to one another. So I know that at one point they were living in, say, their vans in each other's driveways, cooking for each other and trying to help the other and trying to manage their symptoms of headaches and nausea and ringing in their ears and all the things that came with post-concussion syndrome.

15:59Holly Parkes: Was Billy getting anything different in terms of his treatment to Shane?

16:04Shane Christie: Bill was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I think, even though he had suffered multiple concussions, was living with essentially a brain injury. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He was seeing himself change, and so was Shane. They were seeing their lives kind of fall apart, disintegrate. They were losing a handle on relationships, finances, their personalities were different. and it was a somber state but with no real answers or help or anything, just this constant push towards the mental health thing, which was just a symptom of their brain injury. Right.

16:42Holly Parkes: And what do you remember as the biggest changes in Shane's personality?

16:48Shane Christie: Oh, massive. As the years went on, I saw sort of him become rough around the edges. His hair grew out. he'd be sort of unshaven his posture changed he became more fragile lost a lot of weight he would talk a lot about little things become obsessive over negative things he didn't really trust anyone or anything and yeah a lot a lot of changes in him and his personality

17:21Holly Parkes: Just like Shane Billy changed too his dad has told us how Billy cut a hole in the wall of his wardrobe and just sat inside it. It was three feet wide. He just couldn't handle the light, couldn't handle life. And even though Billy and Shane were going through the same thing, suffering the same pain, a few years into retirement, being there for each other became too much, unbearable even.

17:54Shane Christie: I asked him one day, oh, how's Bill? And he was like, oh, not so good. No, I don't think he's doing so well. And I was like, oh, okay. I was like, have you been seeing him? Have you been catching up? He was like, not really. It just, it got really difficult in our friendship. Small things, like I would lend him tools and then he wouldn't return them and they'd be out in the rain or he wouldn't remember borrowing them. Sort of stories like this where he felt that continuing the friendship was getting more and more difficult. And he said it was stressing him out. So Shane had to be very cutthroat with his concussion symptoms because if he allowed any stress into his life, his symptoms would get worse.

18:36Shane Christie: So if he had one argument, he would be bedridden for about a week with screaming headaches and sort of pressure in his head and these kinds of things. So I think with Billy, Billy's symptoms and Shane's symptoms were interacting. And he told me I just couldn't do it, Holly. I had to kind of protect myself. I couldn't.

19:00Holly Parkes: After five years of dealing with debilitating anxiety, mental confusion, memory lapses and pain, Billy Guyton ended his life in May 2023.

19:13Shane Christie: Essentially, Shane was filled with guilt and regret. And I can relate to that for sure. so Shane regretted not being there for his friend he regretted not fully understanding what Billy was going through he would replay one particular conversation where he tried to give Billy a pep talk so he told Bill something like you just need to pull yourself together Bill for your daughter which you know if you think about it this is such a common way that we speak to each other as friends and sometimes it is the right thing, tough love and sometimes it's not. So this really affected Shane and the guilt ate him up a lot, yeah.

19:59Holly Parkes: Even though Shane hadn't been there in Billy's final days, he did, of course, pay his respects at the funeral.

20:06Shane Christie: So he asks for permission from Bill's mum if he can stand up and speak and say a few words about Bill. So he takes the microphone and says something at the beginning like, I don't mean any disrespect to anyone, to Bill's family, but I want to be honest about what's really happened here. You know, we've got someone who somehow we've let down. We've let him down. And we need to do better, we need to come together. And he sets straight the record. Someone had spoken about Bill's personality and said something like he had become very disorganised and untidy and everything was a mess, and that was kind of, you know, who he was.

20:51Shane Christie: And Shane was like, no. The Billy I knew before he started to deteriorate was very clean, very tidy, took a lot of pride in his home and even when he presented a plate of food, it would be beautiful. So what's happened in the last years is not necessarily Bill. Shane's instinct was, Bill's been through something here we don't really quite understand and I'm pretty sure I'm going through the same thing.

21:25Holly Parkes: Coming up, what was really going on inside Shane and Billy's brains?

21:37David Walsh: Just a quick breather to tell you about today's sponsor, Allianz, a partner that's all about opening rugby up to more people. Their support goes way beyond Allianz Stadium. Through the Allianz Future Fund, they've already put over£100 ,000 straight into community clubs across the UK, helping fund projects that bring new people into the game. And with the Allianz Kickstart programme now reaching 5 ,000 schools, thousands of kids are getting their first taste of rugby, some for the very first time. If your local club could do with a bit of a lift, check out the link in the show notes and nominate them for an Allianz Future Fund grant.

22:25Holly Parkes: After Billy's death, Shane goes into investigation overdrive. He's got to understand why Billy ended his own life.

22:35Shane Christie: Yeah, so he became absolutely obsessed with investigating Billy's death. So he was going to kind of explore every avenue, every part of Billy's life, what was happening in his workplace. So he went to speak to colleagues. He's speaking to his girlfriend, trying to understand what was happening in the relationship, what was happening, you know, with friends and family. Was it the stress he was under at work or was it something else? But Billy knew it wasn't that simple.

23:06Holly Parkes: And before he died, he signed up to ensure that after his death, his brain would be sent to the Auckland Brain Bank and be examined there.

23:20Shane Christie: Shane was all about truth. So we are untying the knots and trying to figure out what really is the core, what really is the base of the issues.

23:31Holly Parkes: He's also grieving the death of his former best mate and it's taking its toll on him.

23:37Shane Christie: The grief of losing Bill is making his symptoms much worse. So he needs support and I'm happy to have him at my house.

23:48Holly Parkes: Holly and Shane never officially got back together, but they remained really good friends and after Holly returned to New Zealand, they became as close as friends could be. Holly lets Jane stay with her whenever he wants And she's taken on the role of carer for him Looking after him But she's also seeing him deteriorate before her eyes

24:14Shane Christie: And he has sort of four psychotic episodes in about two weeks And this is completely different than anything he's experienced before

24:26Holly Parkes: Describe one of the psychotic episodes What did it mean?

24:30Shane Christie: Part of these first psychotic episodes, he is convinced that when he's not there and he's at my house, someone's in the house and moving things around and whatever. So he tears up these little white pieces of paper and puts them on top of doorways to see if anyone's moving things so he can see.

24:50Holly Parkes: Puts a piece of paper on the door so if the door opens, the paper drops.

24:54Shane Christie: Yeah.

24:54Holly Parkes: And he's checking just, yeah.

24:56Shane Christie: Yeah. So his mind was really just playing tricks on him.

25:00Holly Parkes: Initially, Shane tries to keep this from Holly, but eventually he comes clean.

25:30Shane Christie: I need to seem like the person who's in control and like got a hold of whatever's happening. Like, yeah, yeah, I'll figure it out. We'll be okay. And then I get in my car and have a big cry and be like, what is going on with this man? And then sort of two days later, I tried to go somewhere on a Sunday morning and I couldn't because I was still overwhelmed trying to process this. And what am I going to do with him? So I'm sitting on the side of the road and just sort of crying and thinking. and all of a sudden I'm just, I hear kind of a voice that's very strong in me. It's like, it's his head, it's his head, it's his head, it's his concussion.

26:11Holly Parkes: Holly starts doing research of her own and comes across a disease that's everywhere in the NFL, that is the National Football League of America, but not so much in rugby's world. chronic traumatic encephalopathy it's called better known as CTE no one mentioned that CTE could be a possibility not even a possibility not even a possibility you know it is worth taking a moment to tell you about CTE CTE is a progressive neurodegenerative brain disease it causes brain cell death and shrinkage to the brain it leads to dementia like symptoms which affect thinking, mood and behaviour. Things like memory loss, confusion, impulsivity, aggression, depression.

27:04Holly Parkes: It's primarily caused by repeated head impacts. This includes both concussions but also subconcussive hits, that is, head knocks that are symptomless.

27:18Shane Christie: And this is the first time I'm like, okay, this is, we've been grasping in the dark, we've been playing with this, we've been writing CTE question mark, and now I think we're getting closer to something here.

27:30Holly Parkes: The big problem in trying to identify CTE is that it can only be diagnosed in death once a brain has been examined posthumously, which was why Billy Guyton was determined to have his brain tested after he died.

27:52Holly Parkes: When the results came back from the examination of Billy's brain, do you remember where you were, Shane's reaction? What's your memory?

28:00Shane Christie: Shane came home and he had been to see Billy's family and they'd obviously told him the results of the report. And Shane came back and he was like, it's CTE, Holly, it's grade two. Like, poor Bill. Like, man, the way he must have suffered with that brain disease and so misunderstood and so misdiagnosed and everyone thought he was crazy in the end, that he'd just lost his mind, but actually he was struggling with a very serious brain disease. And then we sat in the lounge and we were sitting on the couch and he was like, you know, I've got the same thing. I was like, I know. Yeah.

28:32Holly Parkes: Did you say you knew?

28:33Shane Christie: Yeah. I was like, I know.

28:43Shane Christie: He said, I won't make it much past 40, Holly. And I was like, yeah, I know.

28:54So we were aware.

28:56Shane Christie: So if you think about that, you think that his best friend guides the way, leads the path, and because of the miracle that it is that Bill has his brain examined, Shane now has more direction. Yes. And now he's convinced. So after that, we start making plans. He gets the forms from the brain bank and he starts to fill those out and makes a commitment.

29:28Holly Parkes: A commitment to having his brain examined.

29:31Shane Christie: And he knows how important it is now. And why do you think Billy and Shane both wanted their brains examined?

29:40Holly Parkes: What do you think motivated him to get that done?

29:44Shane Christie: Can you imagine living with something so horrible that's taken your life away slowly? So maybe at the beginning you had 80%. So you're taking a few knocks and now you're playing at like 80%. You're like, oh, there's 20 % missing from me somehow here. And then slowly every year, you're not even playing rugby anymore, but now you've only got 60 % of the energy or the health that you had. Now you've only got 30%. You wake up in the morning, you can barely do anything. You can be awake for three or four hours and you've got this on fire head. So your headache is so bad that it's burning in your skull.

30:24Shane Christie: You've got ice picks or it's your brainstem is on fire. Shane would explain the headaches to me like bad, so bad, so bad he can't sleep. He can't do anything. And you're living with symptoms where you go to a doctor and they just tell you there's nothing wrong with you. and now you're watching your life fall apart in front of you. Your relationships are disintegrating, you're more argumentative, you're more jealous, you're more paranoid. How scary that must be to live inside of that and the panic attacks Shane would have sometimes when he would read about NFL players who had shot four people and then themselves.

31:05Shane Christie: He was terrified or people who had gambled all their money were bankrupt, were living on the street, had lost their families. Because unfortunately, that's what CTE does. It destroys your life. And you can see the people around you who used to want to be close to you. Now they're afraid to be close to you and they're ashamed or they're moving further and further away from you. And there must be some part of you that's like, I know this is not me. This is not fair. I need to prove that I'm not doing this. something else is doing this. I need to be vindicated.

31:40Holly Parkes: Like as in post-mortem it comes back and Billy's voice and Shane's voice is saying I told you.

31:48Shane Christie: Yeah and you should have listened to me and I was trying so hard.

31:57Holly Parkes: Even after making this commitment to have his brain examined Shane carries on trying to keep a handle on his own symptoms while also learning as much as he can about CTE. Holly is his carer trying her best to ease his pain. As part of this Holly planned a trip for her and Shane to Golden Bay in New Zealand a place they had once been to and had a great time. Now on this trip things take a turn for the worse.

32:31Shane Christie: So it's a two and a half hour drive from our town to this place, this bay. And he obviously sees a group of motorcyclists and they overtake us on the road. And he thinks that they are targeting us, that they've come to attack us and to take his money or to rob us or to hurt us. So this is just on the hill. But these are the thoughts. so then later that night we're just going to bed and there's a power outage he's like what's happening like what's going on and i know it's just a power out shane like it's all good and then he sort of launches into what he thinks is happening which is basically these people we saw on motorcycles earlier that day have cut the power to the house they're going to break in and hurt us and rob us and whatever.

33:25Shane Christie: So he asked me to call the policeman who lives next door to us in this place. So I call him and he's like, no, it's actually the whole bay is out because there's a car accident at the bottom of the hill. Sometimes that happens. So I hang up from this call. I'm like, see, he said it's just a car accident. Then it's knocked the power out for the bay. And he's like, he's lying, Holly. That's what the people on the motorcycles, they wanted a diversion. So all the police will go there. so when they're attacking us, there'll be no one to come and help us and save us. And I'm like, okay. So we're standing here in the dark and then he's like, can you call the policeman back and ask him to come sleep on the couch?

34:07Shane Christie: I was like, actually, no. Can't do that. I can't ask a grown man who's a policeman to come in. Anyway, so then he says, okay, well, we better protect ourselves. We need weapons. so he goes and takes a shovel from the garage and I take a fire stoker thing and we sit with our backs up against the wall in the bed and we hold our weapons and I hold my phone with the torch on so we can see who's coming and then we sit there so this is 11pm till about 4 or 5 in the morning and I know that Shane can't go without sleep because it makes his headaches worse he can't eat sugar he can't stand in the sun He can't be in a noisy place, all these things.

34:50Shane Christie: So he can't be very stressed. So I know that the consequences of what's happening now, it's just you spiral down, down, down. And I think this is stressful for both of us because I think some part of him is realizing he's not in control.

35:08Holly Parkes: Yes.

35:09Shane Christie: And he doesn't know what he's going to do. And he feels close to death in a way because he feels he's lost his ability to, you know, be in charge of his experience.

35:24Holly Parkes: Yes, but your love for him never went away. Because this is not, it's horrible for Shane, but it ain't much fun for you either.

35:36Shane Christie: No, I love Shane. Yeah, I loved him for 15 years. It's a long time.

35:42Holly Parkes: The thing that I've learned about Shane Christie from hours of conversations with Holly and from talking to people who knew Shane is that he was a very special individual. One of his teammates described him as the player that you wanted to follow. I reckon if you were at a party, he's the guy you'd want to be near. He was highly intelligent. He was very empathetic. and I think Holly in Shane had found the love of her life, and that's why it endured as long as it did.

36:24Holly Parkes: And eventually, after you've been looking after him for a year, we're getting into the early months of April, May of 2024, Shane pushes you away effectively.

36:38Shane Christie: Yeah.

36:38Holly Parkes: In spring 2024, Shane had been planning to visit the US to look into alternative treatments and Holly was assessed to see if she could be his official caregiver on the journey. It takes her over the edge.

36:56Shane Christie: And I break down crying and he sees this sort of strain that this past year has put on me and I hadn't really cried in front of him very much because I needed to be the strong person. and then when he sees this he comes to me afterwards and I can see in his eyes he's like, I don't want you to be my caregiver. He has too much dignity, you know? And he's like, it works because we're friends but I can't do this. I can't let you be this for me. And then he makes a decision to not include me in anything anymore because he wants to create more distance.

37:28Holly Parkes: Holly is heartbroken. She decides to move abroad once again, a fresh start, This time to Portugal. She still hears from Shane from time to time, but...

37:41Shane Christie: I could see he wasn't going to let me close again. And I think because he'd made his decision, he knew what he was going to do. He knew that CTE would be something that would cause him to need to basically euthanize himself within the next year or two, same way Bill. and he would sacrifice himself for the greater good, for players who are to come. He would give his brain, he would give his life because no one's listening. No one was listening to Bill and still no one was listening to Shane.

38:13Holly Parkes: And then in July 2025, you get a phone call from Shane and you sense, because of how he kind of framed the phone call, you sense something was happening.

38:28Shane Christie: Yeah, and he's very considerate about the timing. So whereas usually he would just call me or he would just contact me, he keeps saying something like, when's a good time to call? I want to call when you're not tired or when you have time. Tell me the right time. And Shane wasn't really like that. So already I'm like, something's different. So then we have this call and we have a general chat and then he's like, look Holly, I need to tell you a few things. And we have this big open conversation about when we were together and things that happened. And it's really amazing miracle of a conversation.

39:10Holly Parkes: But the call ends strangely. So, yeah, he says, your life's going to be amazing, Holly.

39:19Shane Christie: We'll be friends forever. You seriously saved my life. I'm so grateful for you all these kinds of things and then afterwards when we hang up I have a real bad feeling and I can't sleep so it's early hours of the morning and then I'm messaging him asking why have you done this now and he says with what I'm going to do I need to have a clean conscience a clear conscience, something like this and yeah so he had begun tidying up his affairs and getting things in order and, yeah. Shane Christie ended his life on the 27th of August, 2025.

40:07Shane Christie: It was about 11 o 'clock at night, I got a call and he'd been found about an hour earlier. And, yeah, it's like an earthquake, it's like an explosion, and like the shock and the screaming and the... You just really don't want it to be true and something has been taken away from you, something you'll never have again. And then from this moment you sort of live in this dark, heavy kind of sludge.

40:39Holly Parkes: Something you said earlier in this interview that Shane had said to you that he didn't think he would get much beyond 40. And he didn't.

40:48Shane Christie: In his mind. And I, you know, you're inside your body, you can feel how it's deteriorating. There was something reflecting back at him. Yes. That he was afraid of.

41:05Holly Parkes: I mean, Shane wanted his brain examined. It went to the Auckland Human Brain Bank. We're talking, this is seven months later. Do we know anything about the results? Mm-hmm.

41:19Shane Christie: They're back. They're back. And I'm guessing confirmation of CTE? As bad as you would imagine. Worse than we thought.

41:30Holly Parkes: Wow. Wow.

41:36Holly Parkes: Billy Guyton was the first New Zealand-based rugby player to be diagnosed with CTE. His close friend, Shane Christie, was the second. Of that team of Maori All Blacks who lined up against Harlequins in London on that November evening in 2016, it's believed three have since ended their own lives. In a 2023 study, 68 % of examined rugby players' brains showed evidence of CTE. In the UK, the issue has taken a legal turn. Over a thousand former rugby players, union and league, are now bringing a landmark case against rugby's governing bodies, alleging negligence in their handling of head injuries.

42:30Holly Parkes: One of the most striking examples is Steve Thompson, the famous England hooker, who revealed he has no memory of playing in the 2003 World Cup final. Following his retirement, he was diagnosed with early-onset dementia, a condition increasingly linked to repeated concussions or head knocks. World Rugby has denied any liability in the ongoing lawsuit, arguing injuries are a foreseeable and inherent risk in playing sport. In previous statements, New Zealand rugby have recognised a correlation between CTE and head knocks, but believe that not enough research has been done to establish a causal link.

43:26Shane Christie: Something really wrong has happened here. Shane was betrayed by life, and even in death now, if we're not careful, he'll be betrayed as well. There's been a lot of injustice here that's happened to Shane, and no one would listen, no one would pay attention. In 10 years' time, we will look back at what these boys did to make it known, and either we'll be able to say, we listened and we made things better, or we've got a lot of problems now because we wouldn't look at it and wouldn't change.

43:57Holly Parkes: I am not advocating for rugby to be cancelled, for the game to be banned in any way. Rugby is a great game, but it is a great game that needs to change. Players need to play less. It's now commonplace for professional rugby players to play 30 games per season. That's too many. We have guidance on the amount of physical contact in training. We don't need guidance. we need laws that seriously limit how much physical contact that we have in training sessions. We also need to look at the protocols that govern what happens when a player has a concussion, and we must err on the side of caution. The thing about Shane Christie and Billy Guyton was that if they hadn't had their brains examined, there's a really big chance that their deaths would have been attributed to mental health issues.

45:04Holly Parkes: Oh, they'd lost their minds. It really wasn't anything to do with rugby. They knew it was. They got their brains examined. And of course the examinations told us that they had CTE. In that way they have served the game really well. But rugby needs to do better.

45:27Holly Parkes: And Holly, for her part, has started an organisation called Knock Stop, which gives out pharmacy kit for concussion recovery. She's also made it her mission to share Shane's story in the hope that others don't have to suffer the way Shane did. And she's still racked with guilt.

45:52Shane Christie: Yeah, I mean, it's not a little bit of guilt. It's a lot of guilt. to keep you awake at night guilt. You know when you're closest to someone, you know that you have the power to be there when they need you most. And I respected his boundaries and I went away to give us a break, but I was also really afraid. I was afraid to fall out with him. I was afraid to lift up the garage door and find him. I didn't feel strong enough to deal. And he knew that I would do anything that I could to stop it, that I would be running around town. and in some ways sometimes we have to give each other enough space.

46:26Shane Christie: This is what I tell myself so I can sleep at night now. To fulfill our own destinies we have our own path. Shane had his own destiny and I did my best and he let me be there for a bit. But in the end he had the right to say and to keep his distance from me if that's what he wanted. And in some ways I'm grateful to him because I was terrified. So I'm really sorry and I hope I get to see him again. Yes. but I also am stronger for not having to see his decline and that means now I can do things for him. The same way he fought for Bill, I will try to fight for him and hopefully that makes up for something.

47:31Holly Parkes: That was Holly Parks, the former partner of Shane Christie. Next week, Carl Heyman, early onset dementia and the lawsuit that could change rugby forever. Today's producer was Sophie McNulty. The executive producer was Dan Box and sound design and music composition were by Maule Seto. I'm David Walsh. I'll see you next Sunday.

48:32David Walsh: Before you go, we just want to shine a light on the great work Allianz is doing behind the scenes to support the game we all love. We talk a lot on the Ruck about Premiership stars and England internationals, but every one of those journeys starts somewhere. usually on a freezing morning at a local club with volunteers hand-me-down kit and a belief that rugby can genuinely change lives Allianz gets how important those places are which is why they're launching a special edition of the Allianz Future Fund just for Ruck listeners they're offering grants of£500 to£1 ,000 to help local clubs become more inclusive more sustainable and better set up for the next generation.

49:13David Walsh: Whether it's new kit, safer facilities, or giving young players the space to grow into tomorrow's heroes, this is a real chance to make a difference. Sign up for the Allianz Future Fund, nominate your club, and help support the grassroots heart of the game.