Steve Thompson not very well at all

[sunshiner1]

I was thinking of Ryan Jones recently and remembered this:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2009/ ... lions-tour

I remember my dad commenting on it saying what was the WRU thinking sending a clearly obvious injured player down to the Lions. They seem to care more for the prestige than Jones.

He was more right than he knew. I remember the McGeechan been furious as well at this happening. If this was a small example of the 'care' Jones was getting then it's no surprise he has these problems now.

[hugonaut]

I was thinking of Ryan Jones recently and remembered this:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2009/ ... lions-tour

I remember my dad commenting on it saying what was the WRU thinking sending a clearly obvious injured player down to the Lions. They seem to care more for the prestige than Jones.

He was more right than he knew. I remember the McGeechan been furious as well at this happening. If this was a small example of the 'care' Jones was getting then it's no surprise he has these problems now.

Well remembered Sunshiner. Now that you have brought it up, the circumstances come back quite clearly.

This is unrelated to Ryan Jones, but it's an incident I've remembered for almost 20 years. There was a head clash between Wasp team-mates Lawrence Dallaglio and Paul Volley [referred to here: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2004/ ... cup2003042 and here https://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/rug ... 42695.html ] in a Heineken Cup game in 2004. I haven't looked for a recording of it very hard, because it was brutal.

It was as violent a head clash as I have ever seen, and maybe the most sickening collision. Anybody who watched that match will remember it. It looked like both players were knocked out cold, and the game stopped for a good few minutes ... but both players ended up playing on.

I was watching it in the club, surrounded by current and former rugby players of all ages, and the whole room was shocked that their coach [Gatland] ensured that both players remained on the pitch. This was a whole room of people who had played rugby for a significant proportion of their lives, some of them at a very high level, and people were pretty matter-of-fact about injuries sustained on the pitch.

While you don't conduct a survey in those situation, I would be satisfied that pretty much every person in the room thought that it was flat-out wrong that both players weren't taken off. People couldn't actually believe that Volley [in particular] was still on the pitch – they were shouting at the television. And this was people with no stake in the game, just neutral rugby fans.

At that stage of the game, I reckon amateur players were getting better taken care of than pros. If two guys had knocked themselves out in a head-on-head collision down in Lakelands, there's no way that either of them would have played on. They'd almost certainly have been overseen by the doc and either driven to hospital by him or have an ambulance called for them.

[Twist]

That Sunday Times article - I'm absolutely shocked by that. Trying to reserve judgement til more is known, but if it's even partially true....jesus f%~king christ.

[ronk]

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/co ... -injuries/

3 Irish ex-pros suing. Marshall was a Leinster player.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Not going to comment on the case as such but I have to say I felt awful when I saw Corkery's name there. I've slagged him off on here after some of his media appearances a few years ago and seeing that he's a part of this really drove home the idea that you never know what someone is going through.

I haven't read any details but hope the players all have healthy futures.

[naraic]

How did Leinster Rugby allow Jackman to continue if he had a concussion every week? He says that he had 25 concussions in his last season.

I remember during his early days as a pundit he talked after a game about how he would game his preseason (healthy) cognitive tests. The Leinster medical staff thought was a dumb bunch of rocks.

He used his fingers to add up 5 + 3 and got it wrong on purpose.

Then he was concussed one game and was asked what was 2+2 as part of the head injury assessment. He legitimately got it wrong and the team doctor apparently said 2+2=5 he is closer than usual so he can't be hurt too badly.

[JohnB]

I remember a passage from Jackman’s autobiography published after he retired in which he explained that after one particular concussion he was reduced to descending his stairway at home on his bottom, one step at a time, because his balance was so badly affected. Scary stuff.

[ronk]

Not going to comment on the case as such but I have to say I felt awful when I saw Corkery's name there. I've slagged him off on here after some of his media appearances a few years ago and seeing that he's a part of this really drove home the idea that you never know what someone is going through.

I haven't read any details but hope the players all have healthy futures.

https://www.rugbypass.com/plus/david-co ... ing-again/

[ronk]

Some more about Fitzpatrick https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/ ... 26510.html

[the spoofer]

I remember a passage from Jackman’s autobiography published after he retired in which he explained that after one particular concussion he was reduced to descending his stairway at home on his bottom, one step at a time, because his balance was so badly affected. Scary stuff.

The worst concussion that I had was as an old lad (late 30's) playing 5 a side. Balance was gone for 3 months. I'd stand up and face plant into the wall.

[JohnB]

Spoofer, I hope that you have not had any long term issues to contend with arising from concussion and that you are well on that front.

[limecat]

NFL don't seem to be taking things seriously at all.

https://twitter.com/ChrisNowinski1/stat ... 8613172224

[Avenger]

No it isn't. Shameful really. Massive dereliction of duty over the last week.

[FLIP]

Interesting thread on Twitter about how the process of using cards to penalise dangerous tackles in terms of head injuries is progressing: https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport/stat ... M0v9g&s=19

[riocard911]

World Rugby: Discrepancies meant Nic White wrongly played on against Ireland after HIA

https://www.the42.ie/world-rugby-nic-wh ... 2-Nov2022/

The Aussies got off a bit too lightly on this occasion, IMO.

[wixfjord]

Has anyone read Steve Thompson's book? Is it worth picking up.

The documentary was brilliant, albeit tough viewing.

[ronk]

https://www.irishrugby.ie/2023/03/09/ir ... behaviour/

[wixfjord]

Incredibly sad piece with Fergus Slattery's family in the Times today by David Walsh. He's suffering badly from dementia, almost certainly caused by rugby related brain injuries.

[munster#1]

Having experienced first hand how dementia slowly steals a loved one to the stage where you end up mourning someone who is sitting right infront of you, I can attest to how bad this actually is.

Many people think it is little more than forgetting where you left your keys, or why you entered a room, but dementia slowly takes away who you are, until you end up in a state where you forget how to do even the most basic of things, such as speak and eat.

I really fear for what is ahead of some of the current batch of players.
Players now are training above match intensity, playing far more games and playing against much larger players than Slattery ever did.

[CiaranIrl]

Incredibly sad and powerful article. I'm going to copy it here, because it's behind a paywall and I feel it's important to have it on a Leinster forum. If the mods feel the need to delete, that's fair enough.

DAVID WALSH
How dementia stole my rugby star husband Fergus Slattery

I was concussed after about eight or nine minutes and remained pretty out of it until about ten minutes into the second half. Alister Hopkinson came up from the front of the lineout, I didn’t see him, but I got this massive f***ing punch in the mouth. It cracked a bunch of teeth down to the root. I was on the deck, concussed, but I played on, and after a while the concussion started to drift away, so I’m able to remember all these different things that happened, even though I was f***ing away with it.
I can still see it in my mind right now — about five minutes later, running across the pitch, looking towards the goal posts and seeing this huge crowd of people and thinking, “Where the f*** am I?” I didn’t have a clue. I went to Peter Dixon at the next lineout and asked, “Where are we?” And he looked at me, all agitated, and said, “What do you mean, where are we? We’re in bloody Canterbury.” About ten minutes later I asked him again but he’d just been smacked and had no idea. “I don’t know where the f%~k we are. F*** off.”
Fergus Slattery, When Lions Roared by Tom English and Peter Burns
Margot Slattery takes me to the living room of their apartment in Glenageary on Dublin’s southside. Fergus is sitting upright on the sofa. He looks towards us.
“Fergus, you remember David.”
“Yeah, of course, of course,” he says, smiling.
“David was a great friend of Joe Healy,” Margot says.
“Yeah, yeah, Joe, of course.”
He smiles again and nods knowingly.
I reach for the easiest conversation topic. “Ireland are playing some good rugby?”
“Yeah, they are, they are,” he says.
“Andy Farrell seems to have created something special,” I say.
“Yeah, yeah,” but now he is not sure. Andy Farrell doesn’t ring a bell. Sensing the conversation is going too far, he fills the awkward silence with a smile.
Now 74, he remembers little. Understands little. He is no longer Fergus Slattery. Not the “Slatts” who played 61 times for Ireland, the brilliant tearaway flanker who hounded the fly half Bob Burgess in the Barbarians’ epic victory over the All Blacks in 1973 and then played all four tests for the British & Irish Lions on their unbeaten tour to South Africa the following year. Not the JF Slattery who was inducted into rugby’s International Hall of Fame in 2007.

The Welsh flanker John Taylor was his direct rival for the No 7 shirt on the triumphant 1971 Lions tour to New Zealand.
“We wouldn’t give each other an inch but we were always great friends,” Taylor says. “He was the open-side [flanker] I respected most. In any conversation about the great No 7s, Fergus would be right up there. We spent a weekend together on Wooden Spoon charity work in northern France before Covid and I was reminded of what a great friend he is and such good company.”
Four years on he is Margot’s ailing husband, his life destroyed by neurodegenerative disease. His wife is now his carer. His children Nikki and Cameron grieve for the father they once had and worry about the load borne by Mum. “He was such a great man,” Nikki says. “He gave his best to everything, to us, to rugby, to all the charity work he did after rugby. He loved the Blackrock club, the amateurishness of it. I keep trying to stop myself talking about Dad in the past tense because it’s heartbreaking for Mum.
“Not long ago I was cutting his nails, removing hairs from his nose and I looked into his eyes and he wasn’t there. You poor thing, you are just gone. It’s terrible to see him like that. I said to my husband, ‘He’s dead, the dad I had for so long is gone.’ He used to call me ‘Goose’. He doesn’t call me that any more. He doesn’t know our kids, doesn’t come to visit.”
After a few minutes in the living room with Fergus, the flow of conversation dries. He smiles, I don’t know what to say and he conveys the impression that there is nothing to say. Margot motions me to the kitchen. I glance back and notice Fergus pointing the remote at the TV, engaging with a world that asks no questions.
Long before the diagnosis, they knew something was wrong. Moments at Malaga airport that became scenes. They had a place near Marbella and were spending more time there. Before the disease, he would take The Irish Times to the airport, find a quiet corner and immerse himself in the crossword. Then he didn’t want to do this any more.
Instead he would talk to strangers like they were long lost friends and then suddenly move off to find new people to talk to. He would constantly ask the airline staff if the incoming aeroplane had landed and if not, how long before it would. In his slipstream Margot followed, trying to smooth over awkward conversations, realising this was no longer the man she’d married.
Cameron’s earliest memory of something not quite right was his dad wearing tracksuit bottoms and black leather shoes. “Dad, what’s going on with the fashion sense?” Fergus would say it was fine and his son would tell him he couldn’t go out dressed like that.
“Another thing,” Cameron says. “I’d be at home watching the football and Dad would come into the room.
“‘Who’s playing?’ he’d ask.
“Man United against Chelsea
“‘Where’s it at?’
“Old Trafford.
“‘What’s the capacity of Old Trafford now?’
“74,000, Dad.
“‘Oh, all right.’
“You think nothing too strange about that. But a few nights later I’m surfing the sports channels and stop at Beijing Guoan against Shanghai SIPG.
“‘Who’s playing?’
“Beijing against Shanghai.
“‘Where?’
“It’s at Beijing’s ground.
“‘What’s the capacity of that stadium?’
“You have no interest in the capacity of that stadium. Why are you asking? One evening Mum and I were watching the football and he walks in. We could see what was going to happen and we both said, ‘Don’t ask about the capacity.’ ”

They went to see Dr Justin Kinsella at the department of neurology in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin. Fergus was diagnosed with dementia. This was early 2018. They thought he welled up, on hearing the diagnosis.
At first it seemed manageable. Drugs were prescribed and though there was no cure, the family hoped for four or five good years.
Aware there were different kinds of dementia, they went to see Dr Catherine Munnery at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in central London. Fergus was diagnosed with frontal lobe dementia. That was bad news. There is no cure for this dementia, no treatment that can slow it down and it will adversely transform the personality of the sufferer.
“We came out of the hospital and he ran for the Tube, he wouldn’t wait. He had to have known. Dr Munnery had asked Fergus, ‘Did you ever play contact sport?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I did. Ireland, the Lions da, da, dah.’ She said, ‘I wouldn’t rule out the potential impact of that.’

Since then Fergus volunteered, with the support of the family, for rigorous evaluation by a research team at Trinity College. In a letter to Margot early last year, the clinical neurologist Professor Colin Doherty wrote: “At the time we were doing studies to try and understand the contribution of Fergus’s career and the many concussions he must have received to the development of his dementia in the last few years. We do have some evidence to suggest that there is indeed a connection but as I explained at the time, the only definitive evidence will be from examining Fergus’s brain when he passes away.”
With the permission of the Slattery family, Professor Doherty spoke with The Sunday Times. “My suspicion is that at the level he played and I’ve watched many videos of Fergus, he was a prototypical No 7, hunting down the fly half. Fearless. I think he will have CTE [chronic traumatic encephalopathy]. He’s either going to have CTE or one of these poly pathologies.
“What Fergus has is not normal dementia. If you ask me is his career the cause of this? I would say, ‘Yes.’ I am a doctor, not a mathematician, I cannot write an equation that proves it’s down to rugby. But if you’re asking my expert opinion, if I am called to the stand, I’m going to say, ‘Absolutely.’
“You’re telling me that this guy who played so much and threw himself into so many tackles, and now has a kind of dementia that we know happens to these people, what am I afraid of? There are two reasons that would put a doctor off saying this. One, in the current environment people are afraid of social media abuse. Two, you’re a doctor deeply involved in rugby and your loyalties are torn.”
Margot, Nikki and Cameron want Fergus’s brain examined after his death. They will donate it to the Trinity College research group. Scientific proof of what they already feel.
Margot is sitting at the kitchen table telling about her life as carer. “It’s getting to me because it’s pulling me down, being with Fergus 24/7. Seeing him losing more and more of himself, more of his capacity to be the man he was. We were able to get by for a few years, the kids and I would discuss and finish off by saying, ‘We’re not at that stage yet.’ ”
That stage now approaches. “You enter a dementia bubble,” Margot says. “You live around it, then you live with it and finally you become snared in the eye of a dementia storm. It takes you over and then takes you out.”
While she speaks, Fergus comes from the living room into the kitchen. He is whistling, the sound smoothly rising and falling. He never whistled before his illness. Margot says that after a while, the constant whistling gets to you. Sometimes it makes her want to scream, but she never does. Fergus walks past to the kitchen window, from here he can see beautiful Dublin Bay and Howth Head in the far distance.
“There are five boats out today,” he says as he returns to the sofa.
“It’s as if it’s obliterating my previous life,” she says. “I’m consumed with this Fergus and I’m forgetting the previous Fergus. You are seeing the total transformation of the man you’ve lived your adult life with. My brother was here from the States last year and he said, ‘Margot when you think that man was once at the helm.’ That’s the image I always had of Fergus — you were in a boat that was capsizing and he’s finding a raft to take you on to. He would throw himself into the ocean and say, ‘Get on my back, you’re going to be OK.’ I have to look deep to remember the fun times, the laughs and the craic.”

They met on a Sunday night in the early summer of 1976. Margot Livingstone, originally from Castlebar in County Mayo, had just passed her final nursing exams at the Hammersmith Hospital in west London. Her friend Carol Cooke persuaded her to celebrate in Dublin. That Sunday there was a rugby game in the city to raise funds for victims of the Friuli earthquake in Italy. Carol’s boyfriend Ben Underwood and Fergus Slattery were best friends, so you know what Carol was thinking.
The women went to Barbarella’s nightclub in Fitzwilliam Lane because that’s where the boys would be. Margot now wants to remember that night and hold on to it. “The girls started dancing with their bags on the floor, I went to the loo because I knew no one here and what would I do if someone asked to dance.
“Fergus Slattery stood in front of me, not knowing me from Adam. He had a bottle of wine in one hand, a glass in the other. I’m thinking, ‘How do you dance with that?’ but I did. He was a regular in Barbarella’s, and while we danced the DJ announced, ‘Fergus Slattery is here tonight.’ Fergus said he’d drop me back to Carol’s home. On the street I saw his Toyota Corolla and said, ‘They told me you’re a celebrity. They were having me on.’”
They met again the following night and the next day Margot was back in London, working in the casualty department. At the house where she stayed in Kensington, Fergus called. “I’m coming to London tomorrow.” He turned up in casualty, asking what time she’d be free.
That evening, “He was wearing a jungle print shirt and I said, ‘Ah Jesus we’re not going to the Bunch of Grapes with you wearing that.’ He was like someone going to the Mardi Gras. The shirt wasn’t for me, and I said, ‘Get something better.’ He said, ‘The shirt comes with me,’ and I very quickly realised I’d run out of road with this fellow.”
They got engaged two months after meeting and have been married for 45 years. She saw him play for Ireland at Lansdowne Road, Twickenham, Cardiff Arms Park, Murrayfield and the Parc des Princes. It was clear to her that he was good. He was a successful auctioneer and the family’s social life centred around Blackrock rugby club.
“The club was effectively where Nikki and I grew up,” Cameron says. “John Joe Greene was the bar man, everyone knew him. A rough kind of fellow, you might mess with him earlier in the evening but at the end of the night, we’d help him moving the chairs back into place. He would give us red lemonade. Great memories.”
At school, Cameron played for Blackrock College’s fourth XV. It killed him when adults would say, “What happened to you?” “I’d tell them, ‘Sport would be very boring if every son of every great player was destined to be a great player.’ I told Dad I’d prefer if he didn’t come to watch my games. It was only the fourths.
“All I wanted was to fly aeroplanes. Dad understood that and when I explained what was needed, he helped to fund my training. Once you made the case, he would fully support you.” Cameron is now a pilot with Virgin Atlantic.
Nikki was good at hockey, though Fergus continually told her she was wasn’t as fit as she needed to be. He went to a lot of the games. “When he was there — and this probably sounds pathetic — that was when I wanted to play my best. I wanted to make him proud. He knew me better than I knew myself. I tended to get emotional and we had this thing between us, where he would say, ‘KK Nikki.’ That was ‘Keep Kalm Nikki.’ The calm with a ‘K’ was our little joke. He wanted me to always stay in control.”

As Margot remembers it, the road to the club in Blackrock was paved with good intentions. “I would light the fire early on Saturday morning, put on the Beatles and Fergus and I would agree that after the game we’d leave early, have something to eat at home and listen to more music. But you’d never get home early and the fire would be out by the time you did. The match was over at around half four and we’d been out of the bar at 11 that night. After a game the clubhouse was heaven. You’d meet your friends. God be with the days.”
None of Margot, Nikki or Cameron wish to say bad word to about rugby. There is no blame in this story. Only love and loss. Fergus played the game he loved and it gave him a life he loved. Who could have foreseen that it would destroy the final third?
Cameron remains an avid Blackrock College fan, getting to most of the club’s games in Division 2A of the Energia All-Ireland League. He and Fergus were at Saturday’s game against Dolphin.
Club members look out for his dad. Des Hanrahan, Tom McNabb and Paddy Lucey take him for walks. The great Ireland fly half Ollie Campbell has been a pillar of support. Cameron is pleased Fergus still wants to go to ‘Rocks’ games, “At the games, he likes to keep moving, so he will walk around the perimeter, shaking hands with everybody but keeping on the move. He will see me and say, ‘Ah Cameron, it’s 24-0, right?’ and he will be correct. He always knows the score.”

Neil Francis recalls a trip to Paris in the early 1990s for an invitation game involving present and past players. He travelled to the French capital with Fergus and Margot, the late Willie Duggan and his wife Ellen. On the eve of the game Francis and Fergus were shooting the breeze about rugby.
“How many games have you played this season?” Fergus asked.
“Twenty-five,” Francis said.
“In my third last season before I retired, I played 44 or 45,” Fergus said.
Then an easy silence descended and Fergus got to work on the Crosaire crossword in The Irish Times. Francis watched in astonishment as his friend blitzed through the crossword. “As you get older,” Fergus said, “there are two things you have to keep active. The second is your brain.” Then, right at the end, there were clues he didn’t get and the irritation of an unfinished crossword.
All three played the next day, Fergus and Willie returning to arms for a game played at three-quarter pace. Fergus got one of the missing words before the game started. “Then, in the dressing room at half-time,” Francis says, “he turned to me and said, ‘Corona, the bright disc you sometimes get around the moon. That’s the word.’ His brain had never stopped working. Crossword done.”
Through the past seven years Margot, Nikki and Cameron have been eyewitnesses to Fergus’s loss. At first the degeneration was almost imperceptible, then it quickened. Margot now sees a slight worsening almost weekly. Determined to protect his dignity, they looked after Fergus in a quiet way. Never explained. Never complained. The people at the rugby club knew but that was OK, they’re extended family.
Then the moment comes when it feels right to explain. “You know people would ask,” Nikki says, ‘How’s your dad?’ I’d say, ‘Not great,’ and we’d move on. I wished I could have said, ‘He needs another surgery or another round of chemo,’ because they are more relatable, more tangible. With dementia, it’s hard to quantify. If I try to minimise and say, ‘He’s becoming very forgetful,’ someone’s going to say we all get like that as we grow older. That drives me mad. This is not about forgetting to turn off the immersion.
“So I’m now telling people that he’s going missing. ‘sh!t,’ they say, ‘that’s bad.’”
We’re back at Margot’s kitchen table. “Since you were last here, he went missing again. It was the third time. He disappeared at four in the afternoon. Cameron had been saying, ‘Let him go, he knows how to get back.’ A couple of hours pass. No Fergus. I think, ‘Ah Jesus, what do I do now?’
“I get in the car and go looking. At 7.40pm Deirdre, our neighbour, came to my door, ‘Margot,’ she said, ‘I have Fergus here,’ I thought, ‘Brilliant.’ I’d been up and down the Upper Glenageary Road looking and looking.
“So anyway Fergus is coming towards me with a big box. A Domino’s pizza. And I thought, ‘That lad doesn’t have any money on him or phone or keys.’ I thought, ‘How did he get the pizza?’
“He told Deirdre the pizza was for Cameron who wasn’t around at that time. I went up to the Domino’s place and asked to pay. The guy remembered [serving] Fergus, and said he wouldn’t accept any money. He had no idea who Fergus was. So I told him, my husband has dementia. He kept saying it was fine and he was not going to accept any money for the pizza.”

The family now uses Apple trackers, one attached to Fergus’s keys, the other on to his overcoat. If he leaves the house, they can go to an app and know where he is. Before going to bed at night, Margot hides the kettle. That way, Fergus can’t scald himself. She sleeps with his and her keys under the pillow, which is the only way she can get a restful night.
Nikki’s husband, Wally, once asked Margot what was the worst part and she said it was the knot in her stomach in the morning, not knowing which Fergus she was going to get. The quiet man with the remote control prepared to sit on the sofa and watch TV or the more restless, demanding one who won’t take no for an answer.
She is indebted to the people at the Orchard Respite Centre who take Fergus for six hours three times a week. That is if he agrees to remain that long. Margot stays within ten minutes of the centre so that she can quickly get there. A woman at the Orchard mentioned to Margot that dementia is the disease of the shifting sands. “Tell me about it,” Margot thought.
“We watched the Ireland v England [Six Nations match],” she says. “He barely knew it was England. Andy Farrell, Owen Farrell, he hadn’t a clue. He knew Johnny Sexton is someone he should have known but he couldn’t remember the name. He kept saying, ‘There’s your man, there’s your man,’ but he couldn’t remember the name.”
All the while, the sands shift. “For the last two nights, he hasn’t gone to his bedroom, just stayed on the sofa. I ask him and he says no. He’s just become totally uncooperative. If you ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do, there’s no persuading him. He can roar and shout. That’s not the man I married.”
They know Fergus needs to be in a nursing home receiving constant care. “We are looking at options but if Fergus is not happy, I’m not going to leave him there,” Margot says.
“This disease is taking two people out. Fergus and I. This has taken away my retirement and I am healthy. This was the time in my life I thought I’d be cruising.”
Nikki comes from Tipperary as often as she can. Tries to talk to Fergus and realises he can’t do that any more. She spends time with Margot. They talk, they keep each other going. “There are days when I leave Dublin,” Nikki says, “and as I hit the motorway I’m in floods of tears. I find the car on my own not a good place. I am thinking, ‘F***, this is some sentence for Mum.’ Unrelenting and thankless but Cameron and I really appreciate her. Dad of old would die at the thought of what he’s putting Mum through.”
And then she says, “I have seen my father cry three times in his life. When his own dad Tom died. When my mum came out of theatre after breast surgery, he was standing against the wall in the hospital, his hands around his head, trying to compose himself. The last time was the day I got married. Seeing me in my wedding dress, he burst into tears.
“‘Dad,’ I said to him, ‘You’re making me cry.’ ”
Brain analysis to help medical research
This is the letter sent by Professor Colin Doherty, consultant neurologist and head of school medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, to Fergus Slattery’s wife Margot. He writes that “we were doing studies to understand the contribution of Fergus’s career and the many concussions he must have received [to his condition]. The only way to secure a proper analysis of [his] brain will be to ask for a coroner’s autopsy. This will be generally granted if a family member such as yourself is concerned that something in life (Fergus’s career) might have contributed to his death.”
The letter to Margot from Professor Colin Doherty