Rugby, Ryan Jones and senile dementia: “My world is falling apart”

From our correspondent Davide Chinellato

July 17
– LONDON

“I’ve lived 15 years as a superhero. And I’m not. Now my world is falling apart.” Ryan Jones, 41, was a rugby legend, captain of Wales who in 2008 and 2012 made the Grand Slam, that is, winning the Six Nations without losing a single game. This oval ball superhero is now dealing with the first signs of dementia and chronic traumatic brain damage that prompted him to join legal action against the world federation and those of England and Wales. The of him, they told him, is one of the worst cases that experts have seen. And now Jones feels that life is slipping out of his hands. “I’m scared – he admitted in an interview with the Sunday Times – because I have three children and an adopted son and I want to be the best father in the world. Instead I don’t know what the future has in store for me.”

the illness

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Born in Newport, Wales on March 13, 1981, a football goalkeeper before falling in love with rugby, Jones made 75 appearances for the Wales national team from 2004 to 2014, winning the 6 Nations for the first time in 2005 and then as captain in 2008 and 2012 until retirement in 2014. He quit rugby in 2015, he had to deal with depression, from mild now as the first symptom of the disease that is changing his life. “I am the product of an environment in which only process and performance count – he told the Sunday Times -. But I just want to live a happy, healthy and normal life, but this possibility has been taken away from me and it is not there. nothing I can do about it. I’m terrified because I don’t know what if in two years I’ll still be in me, if I’ll be away for a week or forever. It’s the fear I have to live with, the one that will never leave me. And it’s difficult because every once the disease strikes it leaves its mark: every relationship I ruin, every relationship I neglect, makes everything even more difficult. I don’t know how to deal with all this, how to heal, how to win. “

against rugby

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Jones says he would not change what he lived, that dream that led him to become captain of Wales, to become the superhero he no longer feels he is. But he chose to have sued the governments of world rugby to make sure that what happened to him does not happen to others. “It’s like they’re walking with their eyes closed in a catastrophic situation, doing nothing to avoid it,” Jones said. World Rugby, the world government of the sport of the oval ball, has entrusted its response to a statement, without specifically commenting on the case of the former Wales captain. “We want to take care of every member of the rugby family and try in every way to help our players, driven by a clear commitment to further make ours the sport that most of all cares for the health of its athletes. We will continue to do so. take care of our past and present players, because rugby is a healthy sport with clear health benefits. We do not leave our family simply because we have stopped playing. “