The former French champion in a shock interview: “I don’t remember just one second of a rugby game that I played. Never gone to the neurologist, so much memory would not come back”
For everyone it was “the ogre”, or “Hannibal Lecter”. He loved to call himself “a compromise between a man and a beast”. In any case, Sebastien Chabal was a unique and inimitable character in the world of modern rugby. And for this reason his latest statements make even more impression: “I don’t remember the date of birth of my daughters. I don’t remember one second of a rugby game that I played, I don’t remember even one of the 62 Marseilles I listened to”. The words, these words above all, are boulders, but unfortunately they are not an isolated case for those of the generation of Chabal, a third French line that played from 2000 to 2011 and that is paying dearly the many shots at the head received in a period where there was no attention that – fortunately, despite its limits – World Rugby today dedicates to brain commodities, between new protocols, immediate replacements and continuous checks.
The drama
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“I have never gone to a neurologist, so my memory would not return,” he said in an interview published on “YouTube Legend”: they are words that would make an impression called by anyone, but who pronounced by a living myth of contemporary rugby leave a daily feeling. Chabal, a man who seemed invincible, with that imposing physique, the beard that has become a trademark, is losing his memory. Not only did the memories of a wonderful career have disappeared: the two six nations won, the 2007 feat with the All Blacks (with Chabal who goes on a hard muzzle against the Haka of New Zealanders), the destinations, the play. The memories of a lifetime have also disappeared: “I don’t even remember the important events of my family, like the date of birth of my daughters. I have some children of childhood, but perhaps because they told me. When I talk to my wife I tell her I tell her that it was not me who played rugby. And since I always thought I was a little an impostor, I arrived there almost by chance, I really have the feeling.”
Complaints, processes and too many cases
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The generation of Chabal, and the previous ones, has been marked by problems of this type. Cerebral commodities, memories losses, also some cases of SLA. Chabal himself explained: “There are and there have been several judicial proceedings about it. We former players have collected many shots on the helmet”. The most striking case concerns a trial that started in 2020, with a complaint that started with over 200 players against the British and Welsh federations, ree of not having done enough to protect the health of the players.
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