It’s rare to find a man who quit amateur club rugby in his mid-twenties, only to make a return in his mid-thirties. Of course, there are some who are coaxed out of retirement after a successful endeavour at a professional level, to participate in a lower-league “dream team”. However, once those competing at junior level hung up their boots, they mostly remained that way.
This wasn’t the case with Ciarán McCarthy. In the early 1990s, as a college student at UCD, he called time on his rugby career. But, a decade later, influenced by his legal friends at the Four Courts- where he was engaged as the business manager of a publishing firm, he decided to step onto the rugby field again. His comeback started with a low-key match involving Dublin and Belfast barristers on a November morning in 2001, the same day Ireland faced New Zealand in an international fixture.
The game went smoothly and encouraged McCarthy to reignite his rugby flame. Therefore, he joined his neighbourhood junior club, CYM based in Terenure. Having been one of the players instrumental in Terenure College’s Leinster Schools Cup triumph in 1984, engaging in rugby was not something entirely foreign to him. Despite his speed and skill, his rugby career hadn’t progressed past the student level.
Just a couple of months after resurrecting his rugby journey with CYM, McCarthy found himself playing on a nearly unplayable Offaly county bog on a freezing January day. He questioned if the back-breaking struggle could even be considered leisure. Things took a more despairing turn with the knowledge of an impending long drive home, followed by the continuation of business the next day. Nonetheless, McCarthy never made that drive home. Instead, he ended up in Tullamore Hospital while his comrades voyaged back to Dublin. A botched attempt at a tackle midway through the game, followed by a slip on the muddy terrain, and a tackle causing him to fall awkwardly resulted in an incomplete spinal cord injury. McCarthy’s life was consequently turned on its head.
Soon after the on-duty physician had portrayed the grim circumstances, the CYM club’s head passed his mobile to McCarthy, allowing him to dial home. It’s challenging to imagine a more emotive scenario: contacting your mother from a hospital stretcher, revealing that a return to rugby has resulted in a wheelchair. His parents’ world had quite suddenly transformed as well.
This prompted the following internal dialogue. Surely, for the majority of us, the conversation would have focused on the unthinkable harshness of the situation. However, once he was moved to the Mater hospital’s spinal department, McCarthy had come to terms with the situation and shifted his focus to what the future held.
“Yes, it was extraordinarily unfortunate, but I believed, ‘If it can happen to anyone, why not me?'” McCarthy acknowledges. “Fine, it happened to me, but does that mean I should become bitter and spend the rest of my life with resentment? Or should I adopt a positive approach as much as possible? So, what’s needed for that? Regular physiotherapy. Adhere to the schedule. Take the initiative. Remain persistent.
“The decision I took was ‘I’m going to fight back, I won’t allow this to dictate my life, I’ll do my utmost to control it.’ That made me psychologically better. That attitude improved my physical condition. In essence, retaliate in the best way you can.”
He held onto the fact that his spinal injury was not total, but partial. He opted to view the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel as a way out rather than an impending disaster. Essentially, he adamantly resisted accepting the new life he was given.
He authored a book detailing his entire journey. When reading I Will Walk Alone, there are times when you wish he’d rebuke certain individuals who seemed to lack empathy. Despite not pointing fingers, he succeeds in conveying his internal anger about being discussed as though he were invisible, and without a stake in his own destiny. That was not acceptable to him. Therefore, he forged ahead, concentrating on making minute progress through enormous exertions, though there were setbacks.
Infections often become a persistent threat for individuals with spinal injuries. The immune system can become compromised when the spinal cord experiences damage. McCarthy has faced sepsis on several occasions. Experience has equipped him to identify its symptoms when they start to appear.
“He confides that he has now fully grasped the phenomenon, likening it to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The pattern appears clear to him: an escalation in temperature, accelerated heart rate, quick and shallow respiration, and the onset of tremors or ‘rigours’. He recognises these as the four characteristic signs.
McCarthy shares an account from his past when he was approached by an emissary from the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU). The representative aimed to manage the situation, providing reassurances that, despite the evident hardships, financial support was on the way and there was no reason for worry, nor for any public disclosure.
However, McCarthy rebuffed their overtures,quite explicitly stating his disinterest in having any involvement with the Charitable Trust. He recalls their proposition: ‘Certainly, we’ll provide financial assistance, but there’s no need for you to publicise, endorse or even discuss the fact that you’ve become paraplegic because of rugby’. This was more than two decades ago. He believes that there has been an observable shift in IRFU’s culture since then – an alteration in thought, emotion and action, which is heartening.
Across the nation, there are thirty-six ex-players, all men and all non-professional, who have suffered severe injuries due to rugby. The IRFU Charitable Trust has come a long way since its inception, particularly after the appointment of Dr Cliff Beirne as its first chair of care in 2011. In 2019, the trust began funding research into spinal cord injuries by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI). Later, this project was classified as a Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) programme, with additional funding provided by the Science Foundation Ireland’s AMBER (Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research) centre at Trinity College Dublin.
Despite more than two decades passing since his accident, McCarthy retains a strong faith in potential breakthroughs. He diligently fulfils his responsibilities by aiding the researchers and adhering to a stringent physiotherapy regiment akin to that of professional players. He comprehended from the very start that this journey would take time.”
While the challenge of fixing the havoc wreaked on a stretch of road presents a dreary side, the brighter view shows scientists globally striving to identify methods to reverse the damage. Among these, a pair of labs situated in Dublin, one at RCSI and the other at UCD’s school of medicine, are under the spotlight. For Dr Eimear Smith, a rehabilitation medicine consultant and representative of the IRFU Charitable Trust committee, this represents a significant progress given that in 2017, they had to import a lab scientist from abroad for the International Spinal Cord Society’s conference in Dublin due to local unavailability.
Dr Smith notes, “We now possess two excellent labs who are joining forces on this matter. This cooperation is substantial given their shared competition for funding. The goal shouldn’t be that one lab finds a cure for everything but rather we need to foster collaboration.”
Simply put, damaged spinal cord is compared to a collision site. The ultimate goal is to refine this damage with a 3D-implant tailored to the specific situation, stimulating the growth of healthy cells.
In the words of Dr Smith, “This is what we term a ‘combinatorial approach’, and is integral if we are to make progress. It is not going to be a single solution. So, on the bright side, the work is fantastic but we need to keep our expectations in check. Will we see results in the ensuing five years? Likely not. The advancement is incredibly gradual.”
McCarthy understands this. He doesn’t foresee himself running to work anytime soon. He acknowledges that coordinating all the elements requires a ground-breaking scientific discovery with worldwide ramifications and such a thing cannot happen in the blink of an eye. Yet, this isn’t an impossibility, this is methodical, organized and scientific.
He clarifies, “Based on that, I foster my hope. This hope is fuelled by this work as well as my resolve. It’s not an illusory hope but a sincere one. The tasks they are undertaking is very real and incredibly crucial. It’s only a question of time.”
He is willing to be patient.