Blindsided Read online

  I cut the voice off before it went any further.

  ‘Stop! No.’

  The prospect of not experiencing those scenarios again, not to mention many others, was suddenly unthinkable. So there was no choice but to decide, there and then, that it absolutely wasn’t going to happen. I was forty-eight years old, for goodness sake, and, until recently, as fit and healthy as any guy my age. Also, I had far too much still to do—much more to enjoy and achieve in my life. It was also gradually dawning on me how lucky I was to even have a choice as to what my next move was. After all, many people in my situation don’t get that luxury; the option of life is just removed from the table for them.

  So instead of thinking negatively, based on the pain, discomfort and frustration I felt, I turned it all around. ‘All right, I’m in charge now.’

  Because of the way I felt—the headache, the fatigue, the freezing cold, the confusion as to what the future held—I used what I didn’t want, how I didn’t want to feel, as my motivation. I wanted my life back.

  TWO

  TRANSCENDING NODDY

  WRITING A BOOK CERTAINLY wasn’t foremost in my mind in the latter part of 2012. First, an authorised biography of me, entitled Noddy—written by my friend and former Wallaby teammate, Andrew Slack—already existed, having been published in 1995. Incidentally, the nickname Noddy is one I’ve had since I was ten. A kid I was at school with fell asleep in class one day and I called him Noddy because he’d nodded off. He didn’t like it and said, ‘How would you like to be called Noddy?’ And the nickname stuck.

  As far as I was concerned, Noddy was a great book that had been received well, so what more could possibly be added? I stood back from the idea and thought, quite justifiably, ‘Slacky did a great job.’

  But then I thought about what was actually in the book: it only covered my life up to the year or so prior to the 1995 World Cup in South Africa, which was perhaps the tipping point of the biggest shift in the history of rugby union, with professionalism only months away. I’d never really considered that I was one of the few top-level players to have straddled the two eras of the game. Maybe, by doing so, I had a unique point of view to share?

  Not just that; Noddy had covered those pre-professional years from a third-person point of view, albeit with considerable input from me.

  I suppose that with the passage of time and all that it involved—marriage, kids, work and life generally—I had forgotten how long ago my playing career was. I certainly hadn’t factored in that key element called perspective.

  Measuring yourself during and after rugby—it’s not easy. For years you strive to be a rugby player. Then you make it. You’re like a performer every weekend. You’re praised when you win and criticised when you falter. Then it’s gone. You lose your identity. You feel like you’re starting out again. It shouldn’t be a surprise, because when you begin to play rugby, you know it’s probably going to be over by the time you’re thirty-five. You know that, but your mind will tell you lies anyway. Because there’s always that fear of saying to yourself: ‘This is it. My last game.’

  Once you walk away from playing, you have to work out what you want to do with your life. It can be exciting—‘What’s coming next?’ But part of me always knew that whatever I did post-rugby, it might not measure up to playing for Australia.

  So after leaving hospital I began to think about the rugby days again. I transported myself back there to see how it felt. In my head I lost a few pounds, trimmed off the grey hairs and put myself back on the paddock in the green and gold—‘I remember this place.’

  Gradually I began to question whether what I’d felt back then accurately reflected how I feel now, and so, as the idea of writing this book was discussed in more depth with those closest to me, I started to believe that it might indeed be an interesting exercise to look back on certain aspects of my life from the point of view of a 48-year-old man—the guy you see with the glasses and the suit on Sky television, not the lithe, rugby-playing me of almost twenty years ago. Furthermore, I was a 48-year-old man who’d just survived a major stroke. A hell of a lot had changed. Aspects of my personality have been altered forever.

  In those terms the idea of a new book seemed much more palatable. But I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t still have some lingering reservations.

  ‘How much do I really remember?’

  ‘Will it be interesting even if I do?’

  I also thought, ‘Who would care about what I have to say nowadays?’ The bottom line, too, is that I’m not someone who enjoys blowing my own trumpet. ‘Look at me—I did all this great stuff all those years ago.’ That’s not my style. I’m also not a person who particularly likes delving into my emotions—far less putting them on show for the benefit of a worldwide reading audience. That’s just not my personality.

  Or at least I thought it wasn’t.

  But as I navigated the difficult few months after my stroke, my feelings began to change. I had to start measuring myself all over again, with a new set of standards based on my reduced vision. Inevitably I ran into all kinds of people who’d had similar or far worse experiences and outcomes than I’d had. I couldn’t help but be profoundly moved by their stories. I met young people whose lives had been completely destroyed by stroke: everyday people who’d lost their job, home, a relationship—or maybe all three. Perhaps they’d become completely blind or were facing a permanent, life-altering physical disability.

  These encounters focused my mind on two things. First, given the nature and severity of my own stroke, I acknowledged that I was incredibly lucky to be alive and in relatively good health. Though my vision was significantly impaired and there were adjustments to make as a result, I was still able to go to work, earn a living and be an active part of my family. Yes, it was tough at times on the emotional and physical fronts, but I’m still here and I’m increasingly grateful for that. As I compared myself to some of the people I met who’d also suffered strokes, I would be thinking, ‘Jeez, I really dodged a bullet here.’

  Secondly, I wanted to use my experiences and outreach to give something back to people who weren’t in such good shape—people who needed something as basic as a reason to get out of bed each morning. These thoughts would develop, and are still developing as I write this. Life for me has always been an exercise in setting small goals. It’s all very well having a grand dream, but I’ve always thought it’s more important to plot how you’re going to get there.

  I started to look at the book idea from a different standpoint. The focus shifted away from me towards others. What about other people who’d had a stroke? What of the unfortunates who might have one someday down the line? Could my story benefit them in some small way? Perhaps a tiny aspect of how I approached recovery could be inspiring to them or their families, who bear the impact also. I’ve been around long enough to know that people who are in the public eye, even on the relatively small level that I am, have the ability to make a difference.

  I wanted to make a difference.

  That was a significant motivation behind this book.

  Also, from a purely rugby perspective, there’s an awful lot within those playing years that I’ve never actually thought about. Even in the burning heart of my career, I never dwelled on games or the incidents within them for very long, so I was interested to see how I’d view things today—through eyes that are a little wiser and more pragmatic, maybe. As I took a step back from the way I’d previously viewed my career I was surprised by what I saw.

  Obviously, the game has changed hugely in the almost twenty years since I stopped playing in 1998. My position within the game has changed a lot too. Although my involvement with the sport has continued, albeit on the media side via my work for Sky Sports and other broadcasters, you can never recapture the emotions that you feel within the white lines of a playing field, no matter how many Super Twelve/Fourteen/Fifteen or Heineken Cup games you analyse from the comfort of the studio on a Saturday morning with Fitzy and the lads.


  What I can do now is be both a bit more thoughtful and also outspoken about how events panned out while I was playing. It’s not that I was deceiving myself or anyone else at the time; it was more a case of my preserving a poker-faced demeanour in my playing days, designed to deflect forces of negativity from both the outside world and, more crucially, from within me. There was also the Wallaby code of integrity and sportsmanship to promote, and I still hold that dear.

  Although I probably never showed it in interviews or, for that matter, on the field, strong emotions were there, trust me. It was just much easier to suppress them until some unspecified and distant day in the future than to deal with them at the time. I doubt I’m the first sportsman to process things that way. Maybe it’s a bit old-fashioned, but it was the only way I knew. I always thought, ‘You’ll be fine if you just keep it all in, mate. Don’t let anyone see that you feel.’

  Now, that distant, unspecified day in the future has arrived. I’ve matured enough to have reconciled many aspects of my career and I’m in a position to speak about things a bit more openly than I ever was previously.

  From a stylistic point of view, I should say that the idea of discussing every detail of my life and career in a chapter-and-verse ‘I was born in Brisbane on October 25th 1963’ way doesn’t appeal to me. This book will not do that. While there will obviously be some crossover, Noddy has already covered a lot of that ground and done so very well. Instead, I want to be a little more selective and focus on a few aspects of my career, ones that best illustrate who I was, who I am now and how it all ties together.

  Most of all, my life has been about committed decisions. They crop up almost every day and you’ve got to face them, armed with all the information you have at your disposal. That’s the best you can possibly do in life. The rest is down to the intangibles that you just can’t prepare for—and I’ve got experience of those.

  THREE

  THE ENDLESS ORDEAL

  MANY PEOPLE ADVISED ME to read Andre Agassi’s memoir Open, and when I did I was amazed, as most readers probably were, to learn that he as often as not hated the game of tennis. By any standards it was a pretty incredible admission. How could someone so successful and seemingly so driven have such a deep dislike for what he did best? The fact that he gave no indication of the way he felt when he was playing only made the admission more surprising. On most levels it just didn’t make sense.

  But when I thought more about it, I could understand, at least on a minuscule level, how he felt. I would never say, ‘Actually folks, I always hated footie,’ as, by and large, I loved the game and I still do. But I was always aware that it got in the way of a few things in life and I definitely made sacrifices over the years because of it. For example, in the early days, while a lot of my university friends might have been going camping or surfing at the weekends, I always had a game on a Saturday and would also have to train for it during the week prior. I don’t now consider it a huge sacrifice, given what I got out of rugby in the long run; it’s just a different choice that I made. It almost wasn’t even a choice; it just happened.

  More than anything, though, for a lot of the time it was the goal-kicking that was an absolute ordeal for me. The physical act was fine, but the fear of it not working always ate away at me mentally. In fact, I’ll take that a stage further by saying that I’ve thought many times since retiring that if it wasn’t for goal-kicking—and the psychological pressure that goes hand in hand with it—my career could have been extended. Not by much, but certainly by a couple more years.

  I always knew that I felt the way I did, but I guess we all find coping mechanisms to deal with our fears or to block them out. I certainly never discussed my feelings with players or coaches, not even in the darkest moments. I always wanted to appear in control. ‘Lynagh’s so cool and measured,’ commentators always said. That was news to me. Really, I was like a swan. I looked graceful, in control. Cruising on the surface. But underneath the water, in my head, there was always a hell of a lot going on.

  My so-called quiet mind just isn’t as quiet as most people’s. My dad—a clinical psychologist—always said I was ‘thoughty’, particularly when I wasn’t meant to be thinking at all. I thought about everything, and goal-kicking was just one of those things. I even remember sitting and crying to myself before games when I was younger, simply because I couldn’t cope with my nerves.

  With hindsight, the goal-kicking pressure was cumulative. It gnawed away in the back of my mind from my first under-12 games at school, all the way through to the end of my career. I didn’t always notice or acknowledge the stress, of course, certainly not in my carefree younger days. But as my playing career moved into its final phase and the stakes got higher with the onset of professional rugby, I became increasingly aware of the mental hardship I was heaping on myself before, during and after games.

  No wonder. The margin between success and failure, win and loss, was always such a small one. Consequently, I became increasingly conscious that points and percentages were the only two tangible measures of a goal-kicker’s worth.

  Anyone could look at a newspaper or a TV screen and say, ‘Lynagh kicked well today’, or equally, ‘Lynagh had a shocker.’ Those numbers did not lie. But what people couldn’t possibly see was what I went through to kick either five from five or nought from seven. It took me a long time to even acknowledge that the statistics were a focus of agonising scrutiny from which there was simply no hiding place.

  This responsibility and weight of expectation was apparent to me at Saracens, the professional club in north-west London that I joined in 1996, in particular. Nobody was putting it on me or expecting anything that they hadn’t before. I was doing it to myself. I was always measuring myself. What had changed? What’s the difference between, say, Saracens versus Leicester on a wet Saturday in February and any one of my 72 caps for Australia?

  Well, first and foremost, by 1996 rugby had become a professional sport and goal-kicking was no longer just about points on the board. A number of my fellow players and friends were on win bonuses, which involved significant sums of money. So, in my mind, my role as the flyhalf and the goalkicker became one on which much depended. I felt the weight immediately. I needed to respond to it. I wanted to make sure I did everything I could to win these matches for my team. I didn’t get paid bonuses on a game-by-game basis myself—not unless we won a final or won the premiership. But it was still a huge responsibility knowing how much influence my kicks had not only on results, but also on livelihoods, the ability to pay mortgages and school fees. It was a new kind of pressure.

  What was I going to do about it?

  The key was preparation. During the last few years of my international career, I’d begun to scratch the surface of advanced preparation. Sometimes it worked; other times it didn’t. But by experimenting, albeit on a relatively minor level, I’d learned that by identifying variables and making adjustments to account for them, goal-kicking became less of a lottery. It would never be an exact science, I knew that, but at least I could load the odds a little more in my favour.

  My anxiety about kicking successfully at Saracens was the manifestation of years of mental anguish. The only way I could combat it was to prepare even better than I had ever done before. So I made it my business to get to the ground we were due to be playing at the day before the match, whenever it was feasible, so I could practise goal-kicking, line kicking, restarts—the whole gambit of what I do as the team kicker. I’d dabbled in this sort of preparation in the past, but never to this degree.

  I’d practise right-sided restarts and left-sided restarts. Goal kicks into the wind, against the wind and across the wind. Line kicks up and down both touchlines and into all four corners. I’d watch how every ball behaved and take mental note—‘That corner’s a bit softer than this one.’

  By practising, I became extremely familiar with the conditions that any particular environment might throw at me. So when it came to match day there was barely a
scenario that I hadn’t envisaged mentally and practised in reality many times. This level of preparation didn’t take the fear away completely, but it at least tamed it and made me think, in each game-day situation, ‘I’ve seen you before. I know what to do here.’

  But still it was a challenge. Rugby venues, particularly club grounds, are all very different. On paper the dimensions of a rugby pitch are basically the same. But in reality, no two grounds are alike.

  Different grass.

  Different pitch dimensions.

  Different wind directions.

  Different visual sightlines.

  Different lots of things: advertising hoardings, the colours of the letters on the advertising hoardings, the size and colour of the flags on the roof of the stands, and so on.

  It might sound a little obsessive, but I had to know exactly what the differences were in advance, and, by extension, how they might affect my ability to kick an oval ball between the posts. That way I’d eliminate any variables for match day and, as a result, would be that little bit better prepared. All I wanted was to kick more goals.

  Say we were playing Bristol on a Saturday. I’d ask our manager at some point during the week: ‘Can you ring Bristol and tell them that I’ll be down there at 3.00pm on Friday to practise goal-kicking?’

  He’d go, ‘No problem, I’ll call them now.’

  As far as was possible and practical, it became a part of my weekly routine—no matter where we happened to be playing. I’d drive myself down to Ashton Gate, say, in my car and at my expense, on the Friday afternoon, while the rest of the team would be coming down later in the bus. I did this off my own bat; nobody told me to do it and I never made a big fuss about it. I didn’t get paid any extra, but I saw it as my responsibility and I did it—that’s the game. That was my game.

  My teammates saw what I was doing. They never said anything and, frankly, there was nothing to say. From my perspective, I didn’t need them to comment. It wasn’t about affirmation. It was about taking responsibility. Now I’m sure a few of them might have thought that worrying about their bonuses was something I didn’t need to shoulder. But they didn’t know that this approach was as much for my benefit as it was for theirs. I just needed them to know how much being prepared meant to me, and I’m sure, in their eyes, that was never in doubt. I was part of the team, trying to win games for the team. It was so important to me that I had the respect of the guys and that they never, ever, questioned my commitment.