Former Brumbies and Australian Rugby Sevens star Tom Cusack on the shock cancer diagnosis that ended his career

“People ask, how wasn’t it picked up?” Former rugby star Tom Cusack opens up on the cancer diagnosis which changed his life and the questions he will never have answers to.

“Death wasn’t an option in my mind.”

Tom Cusack has never spoken about why he suddenly ended his rugby career.

He didn’t have the words.

As he sat in his car on the side of a Canberra highway last year, bawling, he understood his life would never be the same.

The “fluke” cancer diagnosis had Cusack wondering if he’d see his six-month-old daughter Rosie grow up.

Tom Cusack opens up on his cancer diagnosis. Picture: Martin Ollman

It was the year he became vice-captain of the Brumbies, a year in which he was supposed to compete at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, and then take up an overseas contract to live out his rugby dreams.

Instead, he was undergoing chemotherapy and shaving off the last of his patchy hair while giving up takeaway food, outside contact and any notion he could play again.

“You have to face your own mortality, that’s what I’ve come to terms with and is a component of my life,” Cusack said.

“And as cliche as it sounds, there is more to life than footy. That has sunk into me because it has finished my career.

“I had an offer to play in Japan, an offer in Italy and one in the UK.

“My wife Amy and I had been very keen to get over for a few years, experience the overseas lifestyle, and the day before I was supposed to make the decision, I got diagnosed.”

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Cusack and wife Amy on their wedding day.

The revelation

Cusack, just 28 years old, has quietly battled his cancer for months.

“I didn’t really know what I was dealing with at first, so I wasn’t sure how to relay that to people,” he said.

“And it was evolving, constantly adding scans, so the longer it went, the time never aligned to go public with it. Until now.”

The verdict last July was stage four, grade two follicular lymphoma – a diagnosis which for most people means they are given 10 years to live.

Cusack commenced chemotherapy a week after the cancer was discovered, and after an early scare – he caught fever after his first course and was rushed to the emergency ward – there is hope on the horizon.

Last week, Cusack received the heartening news that chemotherapy treatment has curtailed the cancer in his body, and he can now begin two years of medicated maintenance.

“They haven’t detected any cancer at the moment, which is good, the whole point of the maintenance process is that it’s supposed to clean up the last couple of per cent - but it’s hard, once you’ve got cancer, you either have it, or you’re in remission, you’re never cured,” Cusack said.

“Look, I’m good, I’m happy, I’ve got my energy back.

“I’m excited for the next stage of my life to begin. As an athlete you’re often scared of leaving the confinement and the safety net of rugby and professional sport, and I think that held me back for a long time to try to do something different.

“My hand has been forced, but actually it has brought me a lot more joy, a lot more time with my family and friends and that is my true happiness.”

But had it not been for the chance discovery, the 2016 Olympic Games Rugby Sevens representative may be facing more alarming prospects today.

“I’d just finished the season with the Brumbies, I was still planning to go to Tokyo to play Sevens, but I pulled out at the last minute from the Townsville camp that was a precursor to going to the Olympics,” Cusack said.

Cusack in action for Australia during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Picture: PHILIPPE LOPEZ

“I had a distended belly, a large gut, which was causing me a lot of back issues.

“So pulling out of the Sevens actually allowed me to get this looked at. I saw a general surgeon, he said ‘You’ve got three hernias in your midline’. Initially he didn’t think I needed a scan, but right at the end he said ‘We’ll send you for a scan just to see what we’re dealing with’.

“Then I got the scan by the radiographer on June 22, she said ‘You’ve got five hernias in your midline’, but then she drifted off and looked at the rest of my organs.

“She asked, ‘Do you have an auto-immune issue?’ I replied, ‘Not that I’m aware of’. And she just went quiet.

“And she asked, ‘Are you sure?’ Right then I said ‘Is there anything to be concerned about?’ and she said ‘I can’t really say’.

“So I’m going ‘Are you serious?’ I left thinking ‘What the hell is happening?’

“Then I had to get blood tests, that was July 6. Then I had a bone marrow biopsy and a PET scan, I saw a haematologist, and he said, ‘Your spleen is huge, your liver is huge, it looks like you’ve either got leukaemia or lymphoma’.

“On July 21 I had to go to a Brumbies sponsor’s promotion, and the doctor called me asking if I could come in, I still had to go to this promotion and on my way I just broke down in the car.

Cusack was diagnosed with grade two follicular lymphoma in July 2021. Picture: Martin Ollman

“I knew. I knew. Because they’d kept calling me back in.

“I went and did the promo at 1.30pm, then went to the doctor at 4pm and got the news.

“The PET scan that showed that it was all through my bowel, got up into my lymph nodes, all through my body.

“And that was it.

“The doctor said it so nonchalantly it almost didn’t register, but I kind of knew there was something there because of all the scans they were making me do.

“I’m sick, you’re not going to beat yourself up about it, no one is to blame for missing it, or not diagnosing it earlier.

“People ask me, ‘How wasn’t it picked up? How did the Brumbies doctor miss it? How did all the other doctors miss it?’ I don’t know, and I don’t care. How did I miss this? I’m never going to hold a grudge on this.

“Who knows how long I’ve had it for, the doctors still can’t work that out.”

The signs

Remarkably, Cusack is likely to have played the entire 2021 Super Rugby season with the cancer in his body.

“I feel it was a year-and-a-half, two years prior to diagnosis,” Cusack said.

“I can only pinpoint it to having the distended belly. But also, I was really pissed off at myself because I lost the 1.2km fitness test for the first time at the Brumbies - and I never lose it.

“They call it the Bronco test, you run 20 metres and back, 40 metres and back, 60 metres and back, and you do that five times.

“I lost it, was 40 seconds off my PB, it annoyed the s**t out me, and I thought that’s just your body telling you you’re getting old.

“It’s called the Bronco test, I’ve still got the record there at the Brums, four minutes 21 seconds. And I lost to Jahrome Brown, who I think was four minutes 30 at the time.

“I am pretty stunned that I still managed to compete at that level in Super Rugby last year, I did feel that my performance declined, I felt I wasn’t playing very well, there was frustration there.

Cusack is likely to have played the entire 2021 Super Rugby season with the cancer in his body. Picture: Mark Nolan

“I couldn’t even run out an 80-minute game, I’d have to be subbed off because I was absolutely stuffed. To think of what that does to the team, because you have a player that should have come off but couldn’t because I was off, there was a lot of frustration in that last year.

“Now I think back to how annoying that was, and there was actually a reason to it.

“I want to put emphasis on how important it is for individuals to be aware of any changes in their performance, their body or just general health and to not just disregard them.

“Otherwise, how you feel becomes the norm, and once it is the norm, it takes a fluke discovery like mine to determine the issue. The symptoms I ignored was a distended abdomen, frequent infections, persistent fatigue and generally just feeling lousy.”

Family

Married to Amy in December 2019, the Cusacks welcomed daughter Rosie in early 2021.

This is not how Cusack his envisioned his fatherhood journey would unfold.

“That was the hardest part, the impact it does have on Amy and Rosie, that if anything adverse were to happen, processing the worst-case scenario, what you’d leave behind,” he said.

“Rosie was at the time six months old. That was the hardest thing to comprehend during the diagnosis.

“I relied on [former Brumbies teammate] Christian Leali’ifano, when he was diagnosed his young fella was about six months old as well – obviously vastly different cancers, vastly different treatments and schedules – but it was a similar concept in that we’d been diagnosed with young kids, a young family.

“That was the most difficult aspect, the impact on my family, but it actually shone the most light on the process too, there was so much joy coming home to my daughter.

Cusack plays with his daughter Rosie. Picture: Supplied.

“I got diagnosed and then the whole country went into lockdown, so in a sense I was like everyone else, stuck at home.

“Once I got the news, I just went through the process of immediately going, ‘OK, how am I going to deal with this, what’s the next step’, I was just determined to do everything I could to beat it.

“Death wasn’t an option in my mind.

“When you go through chemo, you’re basically told to go on the pregnancy diet; no bacteria, so no yoghurts, no cold meats, no cheese. Any bacteria can cause an infection and you’re extremely susceptible to adverse effects.

“So we had very few leftovers, I was cooking a lot, we cooked every meal, and just enough for that meal.

“We ditched takeaways because you just couldn’t trust it.”

Cusack ahead of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Picture: Brett Costello

The future

Prior to starting chemo, Cusack was told there’d be minimal chance he could have more children once the treatment began, so he had his sperm frozen so he and Amy can expand their family in future.

Cusack, who’d already completed a business degree while playing, took the opportunity while undergoing his treatment to gain specialist financial advisory credentials and plans to start work in that field soon.

While Leali’ifano has remarkably been able to resume his rugby career, Cusack was told by doctors he will never play again.

He has also been appointed as an official Brumbies ambassador and will do work with sponsors at games and events.

He, Amy and Rosie have moved from the centre of Canberra to a family farm on the outskirts of the ACT for a quieter life, where he’ll no doubt reflect on his circumstances.

“I would like to thank the Brumbies, RUPA, and my manager David Shand for their continual and ongoing support, and obviously my family for their love and support at this difficult time,” Cusack said.

“I am proud of what I achieved in rugby, I got to experience some amazing things, I got to an Olympic Games and a Commonwealth Games,” Cusack said.

“I captained the Brumbies on one occasion, was vice-captain the last couple of years, travelled to some incredible places.

“I do miss it, I miss the camaraderie of the changing room.

“This wasn’t how I imagined it would end, but I am just so glad this happened to me and not someone else close to me.”