Concussion has ended James McManus’s NRL career — but it won’t stop his life

FEARS of concussion-related brain damage ended Newcastle winger James McManus’s NRL career — but it won’t stop his life, writes PAUL KENT.

THE last time was no more than a glancing blow against his temple.

Nobody would ever call it light, but nobody ever thought it was life changing either.

Even when James McManus stood up, suddenly feeling like a newborn giraffe, his legs failing to work underneath him, he could still read the play and he knew all that was happening as he looked around the field but the best he could do was wobble to the sideline and collapse.

They walked him off but in the dressing room he could still hear the crowd roar. The Knights were trying to make a fight of it and with each fresh burst McManus stood and insisted he return to the field.

“I was quite aggressive to the doctors, in the way that I was talking,” he admits.

The noise and the lights of the dressing room irritated him. He could not think clearly. Finally the Knights doctors sent him to hospital, concerned about his heightened state.

Medical advice has McManus understandably worried.

It was round 20 last year and it would be the last time McManus, born in Scotland and raised in the Northern Territory, to play for NSW, would ever play NRL.

And so this is where he is.

What anybody knows about the brain nowadays is written in pencil. The brain is far too complex to commit anything more permanent.

The information we have changes all the time, so much still to discover, and so what they know today might not necessarily be what is relevant tomorrow and we learn.

At the same time a white fear runs through contact sports across the world.

It was discovered 14 years ago that NFL player Mike Webster died from the effects of what became known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain injury brought on by repeated concussions, and after a lengthy legal case and a famous denial by the NFL sports around the world have had to change the way they are played.

The NRL introduced its concussion policy in fear of the research.

McManus and Beau Scott celebrate NSW’s 2014 State of Origin victory.

McManus saw doctor after doctor since his initial scans but it was far from the end of his problems. He began suffering mood swings, constant headaches.

“I’d go days without sleep,” he says. “I’d go for walks at three in the morning just to try and shut myself down.

“I had short-term memory problems. Concentration problems. I got words mixed up when I was talking ...”

He got sensitive to light and sound. Exercise was banned because it triggered mood swings and sent him for days without sleep. The scans came back showing scar tissue on his brain. It surprised doctors.

“I’ve got minor brain damage,” he says. “I’ve got scarring on my brain that shouldn’t be there at this point in my life.

“They would have expected to see that in a 60-year-old. They said if they didn’t know anything about me they thought my brain would be that of a 50 or 60-year-old.”

McManus after scoring for the Knights in 2007.

He thought of his family. His wife Eshia was pregnant with son Kyden, born four days ago. A brother to 22-month-old Emelyn.

“I was surprised,” he says. “I didn’t think there would be anything on the scans.”

He wondered about his future.

“There’s a lot of talk an innuendo about what that means for later in life,” he says. “Am I going to remember my kids’ names in 20 years time?”

Fear gripped him like it would any man. Who wants to spend their later years talking to a bowl of porridge?

But it is here that the uncertainty of what we know about the brain provides hope.

McManus now with 22-month-old daughter Emelyn.

Already McManus is working on creating new pathways for his brain. Finding a way for his mind to think around the scar tissue.

“You’ve got plenty of time to regenerate,” doctors told him. The trick is to change. Find new activities.

“As soon as you get used to something, change,” he says.

He is doing business courses, beginning work as the Knights’ business development executive, working with sponsors and corporate partners and the Newcastle business community. He is challenging himself to a marathon. He is training every day.

“As long as you keep challenging your brain to new tasks it will continue,” he says.

There is a lightness in his voice as he dreams up his new future. It is the lightness of hope.

Originally published as Concussion has ended James McManus’s NRL career — but it won’t stop his life