A steely resolve: The mindset that made Beau Vernon’s Paralympics dream a reality
Beau Vernon just sat in his room, crying.
Six weeks earlier, in mid-2012, he’d suffered a critical injury to his C5-C6 vertebrae from an accident on the footy field that made him a quadriplegic at just 23.
Beau Vernon has experienced all the emotions sport has to offer. He’s making his Paralympics debut in Paris.Credit: Glenn Hunt
And after he was transferred from hospital to a rehab facility, where he was to spend the next eight months, it all became too much to cope with.
“I couldn’t do anything, myself,” he said.
“I couldn’t turn on the TV, I couldn’t itch my face, I couldn’t go to the toilet by myself – I couldn’t do anything. It really just hit me then and there.
“In that moment, it was a tough one, but I feel like it was a really good one, too, because it made me realise that I didn’t want to sit there feeling sorry for myself for the rest of my life.
“I want to feel as good as I can, and do as much as I can with my life still, and that comes down to me and what I do from this point moving forward.”
Three Paralympic cycles, or 12 years, after that sliding doors moment, Vernon jetted off to Paris this week to play his role for the Australian Steelers wheelchair rugby team – half a world away, but spurred on by that same mentality of positivity and belief.
In the months that followed his injury, a chance encounter with another footballer who’d suffered a similar fate helped solidify in his own mind the right path to go down.
“He’d seen my story on The Footy Show and came into rehab to see me,” Vernon recalled.
“He’d hurt himself about 10 years earlier, and he didn’t even really have to say too much.
“He worked, he had his second kid on the way, [played] some adaptive sport, and that moment for me, and particularly, my family, I think, just provided a lot of hope and optimism that, despite living life in a wheelchair and having the range of movement we had, you can still live a really good, happy life.”
Beau and Lucy Vernon showing off their trademark sense of humour with their kids Joey, Layla and Ollie.
Vernon, now 35, still has no movement from his chest down, his chest and tricep muscles don’t work, and he can’t move his fingers.
“Essentially what I do have is half my forearm muscles, my biceps, my shoulders, and neck muscles,” he explained.
“If I’d been told back in the day when I had my accident that those were the muscles I’d still have working for me, and I’d shut my eyes and try to visualise that person, there’s no way I’d think anyone would be capable of doing the things that I am capable of doing, and there’s no way I’d think that person could be happy or living a fulfilling life, either.
“I think it just comes down to us putting limitations on our beliefs, and what we can do.”
Vernon’s positivity radiates around anyone he comes across, and he’s always looking for ways to help people. They’re the personality traits he’s become known for, but without the love and strength of his wife Lucy, their three children, his parents Daryl (who played a handful of games for Richmond and Sydney) and Kerrie, and his younger brother Zak, and older sister Skye, things would be completely different.
They’ve each played key roles in making him a better person than the teenager who – along with the likes of Scott Pendlebury, Dale Thomas, Lachy Hansen, Xavier Ellis, Jay Neagle, Trent West, Brent Macaffer and Tyson Goldsack – won the then TAC Cup premiership in 2005 as the youngest member of the Gippsland Power side. Pendlebury, Thomas, Macaffer and Goldsack went on to play in Collingwood’s 2010 flag, while Ellis won a premiership with the Hawks in 2008.
“I’m very lucky in life to have Dad, who was the old-school hard arse who really built resilience in me and the attitude that if you fall down, you just get back up, and you keep moving forward,” Vernon said.
“He was hard on me, but he was very fair, and he taught me to be a tough person, which I think is important and maybe we lose that a little bit these days.
“I was also lucky to have my mum, who was very loving and caring. She’d cuddle me, and just the way she’d make me feel loved, and make sure that I’d feel my emotions.”
Vernon’s first encounter with wheelchair rugby came in the months following his accident, when he was exposed to it in rehab.
Vernon, pictured here with former Phillip Island skipper Brendan Kimber, won two premierships as coach of the Bulldogs prior to the pandemic.
As he built up his strength and his independence, he took the chance to get involved – until it all became too much to juggle with his study, work and family commitments, and he went back down the footy path.
Vernon worked at AFL House and went back to local footy – first to the Leongatha Parrots, and then to the Phillip Island Bulldogs. They were the local Gippsland teams he’d played for, and it was while playing for the Parrots that he was injured.
Vernon in action for the Gippsland Power during the 2005 TAC Cup grand final.Credit: Getty Images
He went on to coach three senior premierships in eight years as a local footy coach – including back-to-back at the Bulldogs – before an extended family holiday to Queensland after COVID provided another sliding doors moment.
“We just came up here for a couple of months to create some memories,” Vernon said from what is now his family’s Sunshine Coast home.
“Once we were up here, I had my boy in a basketball day and just happened to bump into someone from wheelchair rugby and they were playing at the same time, or training at the same time, that my boy was at the basketball.”
That person he bumped into was Chris Bond, the Australian captain, and now they train together, along with another star of the national scene, Ryley Batt. “I jumped back in a chair, and absolutely loved it,” Vernon said.
“As a footy player, I was a midfielder and got a lot of the ball, and then I went to wheelchair rugby and I’m the lowest-functioning player to be on the court. You’re allowed a certain amount of points – eight points – on the court, and everyone’s got a point rating dependent on their level of function or disability. The higher-functioning players, who may be amputees where everything they’ve got works, are 3.5s, and it works down by half-point increments down to 0.5, and I’m a 0.5.
Vernon won gold medals in handcycling at the AusCycling national championships.
“Back when I used to play, I probably didn’t enjoy it as much because I’m very much a role player – I’m a Simon Prestigiacomo in the back line playing a role for the team – and I struggled to get my head around that a little bit.
“But since I’ve been a coach and been all about playing your role for the team and doing what you need to do for team success – your role might not be getting as much of the ball, but it doesn’t mean it’s less valuable – it’s made me enjoy wheelchair rugby a lot more since coming back to it.”
Vernon has won gold medals at national handcycling championships, surfed, and played adaptive golf since his life changed forever 12 years ago, but nothing gives him the rush of wheelchair rugby.
“It’s a physical team sport,” he said. “You’ve got to be fit, you’ve got to be strong, you’ve got to analyse the game, and you’ve got to work with your teammates – just like so many of my favourite sports.”
And boy does he love that physicality.
‘If I’d been told back in the day when I had my accident that those were the muscles I’d still have working for me, and I’d shut my eyes and try to visualise that person, there’s no way I’d think anyone would be capable of doing the things that I am capable of doing.’
Beau Vernon
“I’m limited in the kinds of sports I can play, but even if I had the choice, I reckon I’d still choose wheelchair rugby because of that team and physical aspect of it,” he said.
Rather than being nervous about the physicality of the sport and what it would mean for Beau, his family – including Lucy – have encouraged him to put everything into it, and they even laugh with him when he gets tipped out of his chair.
“Despite hurting myself playing a physical sport, I feel like that was just a freak accident and an unfortunate circumstance,” he said.
“I don’t think I am, but you can be confined to a very safe, concrete-jungle type of life when you’re in a chair, and that’s just not the way I want to live. I want to get out there camping, get out there and play a physical sport, I want to get out surfing and living, so when I fall out of my chair it just makes me laugh – it’s the adrenaline.”
Vernon catching a wave at URBNSURF in Melbourne.
For those who’re yet to watch wheelchair rugby, Vernon has a few things to keep an eye out for when the Paralympics start.
“Everyone is going to be getting hit – everyone is going to be copping that, including me, but I’m just happy being a role player in the team.
“I remember watching a bloke who really helped me throughout my journey. He was working and involved at rehab when I was there, and he had the same injury as me, so I peppered him with so many questions. They labelled him as one of the best 0.5s in the world, and I remember watching him to start off with and thinking ‘What are they on about? This guy’s crap. He sucks – he doesn’t touch the ball at all!’
One of Vernon’s key roles is inbounding the ball for the Steelers – despite not having the use of the muscles below his chest.Credit: Glenn Hunt
“When people tune in, just understand that those 0.5s roles are only worth one-16th of the points out there and your role is just to get in the opposition’s way and block players.”
Another one of Vernon’s teammates is James McQuillan, a former country footballer who injured himself in a similar incident to his. They’re two of the Steelers’ five Paralympic debutants, alongside Brayden Foxley-Conolly, Emilie Miller, and Josh Nicholson.
Wheelchair rugby allows for men and women to compete on the same side.
“We’re breaking records with three of our 12 players being female, so it’s pretty cool that we’re leading the charge,” said Vernon, who with 16 matches for Australia is the least-capped member of the squad.
He won’t allow himself to look back over his journey just yet– but he’s well aware of just how far he’s come.
“It’s only a little thing that doesn’t seem that big now, but I was shitting myself to go for a push around the block by myself to start off with. I was seriously scared to go and do things on my own,” he said.
“When you feel that level of anxiety creep in around a decision, it’s probably because you care so much about it and you want to do it but you’re just scared to do it and you doubt yourself. If I ever have that feeling come in, I just make sure that I step towards it, rather than away from it.”
Australia’s wheelchair rugby squad for Paris 2024: Chris Bond (capt), Ryley Batt, Brayden Foxley-Conolly, Shae Graham, Ella Sabljak, Andrew Edmondson, Josh Nicholson, Jake Howe, Ben Fawcett, James McQuillan, Emilie Miller, and Beau Vernon.