Former Wallaby Richard Kingi suffered stroke, coma on way to rugby return

Doctors told him his rugby career was finished, that he would never walk again. That at 25 he was lucky to have even survived. Kingi’s journey back to rugby is inspirational.

RICHARD Kingi thought he was invincible until he started coughing up blood.

That was the last thing the former Wallabies tourist can remember before waking up a month later in a French hospital with tubes for feeding and oxygen stuck down his throat.

The five-year Queensland Reds and Melbourne Rebels veteran, then playing with Stade Francais in Paris, had suffered a stroke caused by untreated double pneumonia.

SPORT. BSM. 10/3/12. Richard Kingi of the Rebels during the Super Rugby match between the Queensland Reds and the Melbourne Rebels played at Suncorp Stadium. Pic Darren England.

He woke from a month-long coma completely paralysed down the right-hand side of his body.

Doctors told him his rugby career was finished, that he would never walk again. That at 25 he was lucky to have even survived.

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Kingi was comatose for a month as doctors fought to save his life. Picture: Supplied

“As a rugby player you need to be tough, invincible, nothing can hurt you and if you show weakness it’s not good,” Kingi said.

“I had led my whole career doing that, thinking I was invincible and a little cough and back pain wouldn’t hurt me.

“But it was hurting me and it nearly claimed my life.”

Kingi woke to a different world to the one he left behind when he collapsed in his home in Paris.

His life had been saved but the battle to relearn how to walk, talk, read and write was fraught with difficulty.

It was six months before the speedster took his first unassisted steps and a further 18 months of rehabilitation before he could make his return to rugby, with the Griffith University Knights at home on the Gold Coast.

Stepping onto the field as a player again was an emotionally charged experience.

“Everything I had taken for granted I had to learn again,” Kingi said.

Learning to read again after emerging from the coma. Picture: supplied

“I honestly believed it would have been longer if not for my wife being there every step of the way.

“There were times I wanted to give up so I owe a lot to her for what she’s done for me.

“When I got back out on the rugby field I started crying, it was something so special that no one could take away from me.

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Richard Kingi rehabilitating. Picture: Supplied.

“These doctors told me I’d never walk again, never ever play rugby again.

“One advice I would give to any rugby player with an illness thinking they need to be tough and train through it, don’t – it could be something worse than originally thought.”

Kingi had planned to retire from football this season to focus on his coaching but the desire to play still burns brightly.

The day where the 31-year-old gives up the game to coach his Knights and focus on his personal coaching business, Kings Skills Training, is coming but has not arrived yet.