Ben John

As he lay in the back of the ambulance, with his first concussion, the medics were concerned about Ben John’s nose: clearly broken, they thought. But it wasn’t: just a gift from his father’s side. The head though, that was the start of a different story altogether.

Aged 26, Ospreys back Ben John played his last game of rugby. During the 2017 Boxing Day derby, receiving a cross-field kick from fly-half Sam Davies, the athletic wing leapt high, a good half-body length further than the oncoming Scarlets’ eleven Steff Evans. As the ball hit his chest, Evans hit his thigh, flipping Ben over to land on his head. In the days when crowd reactions said everything, you knew he was hurt. The commentator echoed the “ooohs” of the crowd and talk of player welfare pervaded. Evans was handed a red, Ben left the field, never to return. “I took six months off at first,” explains Ben, when we meet at his new rugby home, a shed at Old Alleynians RFC in south-east London. “But then, as I came back, I just kept on getting knocks to the head and the recovery started getting longer and longer.”

Following the HIA protocols, Ben was continually failing the assessments at the first hurdle. “For example, day two of the assessment might be going on the bike for thirty minutes, and if I didn’t show any symptoms, I could go to day three. 

“Day one though, was just a symptom check, and I always used to fail then because there was always something lingering and I was never clear to move on. It got to the point where it was taking me six weeks to just get past stage one.

“That’s when I just thought I’m going to take one year off,” he continues. “My contract was ending with the Ospreys as well, so it felt like a good time for me to take a lot more time off – because I was still a young man – to see if I could get back properly.”

What made things harder, was that Ben had been finding his feet in the Ospreys starting XV. “I was probably playing my best rugby in the last three years of my career,” he says. “I felt like, when I was on the pitch, I was just as good as any centre there, I felt confident. And that was the issue, because it made me more frustrated that I was still playing well but couldn’t get back on the field. 

“I just kept getting injured,” continues Ben. “In the last two years [up to December 2017] I only finished three or four games, because of the head injuries, the concussions were taking their toll. It’d be play one game, six months off, come back, play two or three games, then more time off.

“I was getting injured, building back up, getting injured again. My then-fiancée [now wife] Christie found it quite hard too, because my mood used to swing a lot because I was so up and down. It’s like the end of the world when you get injured.”

To try and lessen the impact of the collisions, Ben even attempted to alter his style. “I used to disregard my health and just tackle any way necessary, getting my shoulder in, basically accelerating into the tackle,” he explains. “Then I tried to adjust it to go more chest to chest, so I didn’t get it in the head so much. I was getting hit in the head all over the place – on the floor, on somebody’s hip, I’m quite an awkward player, I’m all limbs. So instead of going really low, I practised going a bit higher on the ball to see if it would make a difference.”

Although being acutely aware and analytical of the dangers of his tackling style, there were still times when he made mistakes. “One of the knockouts was quite frustrating,” he says, “it was a last-ditch tackle and I went low, but then changed my position, so my head was in front and I got knocked out on his hip. Everything I’d learnt I didn’t put into practise, it was so frustrating.”

With the aim of getting out of the rugby ‘bubble’ to aid his recovery, Ben moved to London where Christie already worked, and found a job to pay the bills in the fitness industry, all still with the aim of fully recovering and getting back on to the rugby pitch.

Ten months on, at a fitness event, he got involved in a 30-minute rowing challenge. “It was in a competitive environment where you had to beat everyone else,” he says. “And after that I had headaches for two days. It could have been the fact that I hadn’t gone to that level of intensity for a long time, but I wasn’t sure if it was concussion-related as well. I just thought to myself, well, there’s no point [returning to rugby] because I could feel myself getting stressed and worked up and anxious and so I just decided to fully retire.

“The week leading up to the announcement [in January 2019] was the hardest,” he says. “I wanted to go through Ospreys to announce it, because that’s been my club since I was a kid.

“All the emotions started to kick in just before; I was nervous and anxious, but as soon as it was out, that’s it, it was done, and I could move on to whatever was next.”

No longer contracted to the club, the announcement was as much for his own state of mind as to say goodbye to the Ospreys and their fans. “I just thought it was the right thing to do,” says Ben, who scored fifteen tries in 79 appearances for the Welsh region, “it was also to kind of remind myself that I am retired because of health reasons and draw a line under it all.”

Concussion has been part of Ben’s rugby life going back to his teens. “The first one I remember was when I was about sixteen,” he says, laughing. “I’m only having a laugh because I woke up in the back of an ambulance and, I had a big nose anyway back then, even though it wasn’t as broken as much as it is now, but it was still a big nose – it’s my father’s nose! Anyway, when I woke up, I heard the paramedics say to my father, ‘he’s been concussed and knocked out and also broke his nose quite badly’. My father took one look at my nose and said, ‘that’s not broken, it’s been like that since he was a kid’. 

“There have been a few other knock-outs in training and I’ve had a few knock-outs in games too, especially the last two to three years. Those I found it quite tough to recover from.”

What were the symptoms? “So, it’s different for everyone,” he explains, “but my worst symptoms were headaches, sensitivity to lights – I used to struggle with LED lights. For example, the lights in the stadium. When I used to watch the game as an injured player, when I was concussed, I used to go and watch the games and support the boys and I would struggle to sit there, they were just so bright. 

“Another issue I used to have was anything to do with lines. For example, if you were wearing a shirt with white and black lines, I would feel really disorientated, as if I was going to be sick. Same with the lines on the floor. I used to get car sickness as well from being in the passenger seat.

“The bright lights are the worst though,” he concludes. “I used to wear sunglasses when I drove because the lights of the cars were so bright in my eyes.”

Ben first spoke about his injuries two years ago, which for some fellow players proved to be a wake-up call. “People are starting to talk about it more now,” he says, “when I spoke about my concussion, that I have to wear sunglasses to drive and whatnot, there were a few players back then that said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve had those symptoms as well, I just didn’t think anything of it’. So I think it’s just people talking about it a lot more.

“There are loads of protocols coming in, but it has to start with the players, when they speak about it, people have to do something about it because we’ve identified it. In rugby culture the tendency is just to get up and get on with the concussion, but it’s not a broken hand or whatever that you can easily just brush aside.”

He admits that altering the game is far from easy.  “It’s very difficult to change the format of how the game is played because it is a contact sport,” he says, “but there have been chats about [reducing] the amount of contact in training, and I think that’d be a good step forward. As a back, that’s the best thing you hear, ‘no contact today guys’, and there’s enough contact week in week out.”

Ben acknowledges that concussion is often hidden.  “I think it’s just something that’s a little bit easier to not say anything [about] and just hide and carry on because it’s not on show,” he says. “And it’s about starting that culture of educating the youngsters to just talk about it and, for coaches, if youngsters say they’ve had a knock to the head, then they sit them out, make sure they’re okay, because they can come back next year if they are fine.”

Back to his own case, and although he wasn’t technically forced to quit playing, he’s glad he made the decision when he did. “I could’ve come back,” he says, “I could easily have carried on after the year out and gone back to playing so I think that’s why it was important to say I was retired. 

“Because, looking back now, I think I made the right choice, got out at the right time because I’ve given myself probably a very good chance of recovering well.”

Is he concerend about dementia? “Yeah, that’s one thing that I have been scared of, when I’m 50 when I’m 60...” he says, not finishing the sentence or saying the word, “but I’m trying to do everything I can now to give myself a good chance. But, you know, first of all I got myself out at the right time.”

Ben has sought specialists in all areas that have an impact on concussion and head injuries, from nutrition and sleep specialists to physios and doctors. His wife Christie, Ben acknowledges, found it tough watching him during his final year of being consistently injured. “She’s supported me with whatever decision I made, but she wanted to make sure that I was making the right choice,” says Ben, “so she’s encouraged me to look out for research myself and look into the things like the nutrition and do more work on the concussion education side of things, just so I can see for myself what is happening.”

Fortunately, things have started to improve. “I’ve started to get on top of it, so the last year has been really good,” he says, “I’m having regular check-ups as well and everything seems to be fine. It’s been a long recovery, but it feels, looking back, that I made the right decision. First of all, just to get out of rugby and realise that there is more to life than rugby, was important, because that’s all I’ve known. I’ve never had a job in my life. Just rugby. 

“I started playing when I was eleven, I signed my first contract when I was sixteen, and it’s always just been rugby.”

In lockdown, Ben’s social media stock has risen considerably. His fitness sessions and posts before the pandemic had helped him gain a none-too-shabby 5,000 followers on Instagram, but a switch to more rugby-focused skills and fitness drills has seen him rocket to 25,000 – at the last count. He’s owned the rugby training space with his skills training using assorted household and garden bric-a-brac: hitting plant pots off shelves; using tennis racquets and balls for hand-to-eye; sidestepping through doorways; jackaling armchairs; and an endless stream of kicking and handling challenges, including guest appearances with the likes of James Hook, Leigh Halfpenny and even sport stars from other disciplines, including basketball.  “When I was playing, I always used to be obsessed with doing skills,” explains Ben. “My father used to take me down the park when I was a kid. Me, my sister and my brother with a tennis racquet and just whack tennis balls at us and we had to catch them. It was a competition. 

“And when I used to play, after the sessions, I used to get a couple of boys together to do some extra skill sessions; skill things, whether it is a tennis ball or a rugby ball, I’ve always been the one having a mess about.

“I just thought in lockdown, what are kids going to do?” he explains. “They’re going to be stuck in the house, doing probably a monotonous fitness session, whereas I know if I was a kid, I would want a ball in my hand. So I put everything I did when I was a kid together with what I do with the fitness and skills side and made it a little bit fun to actually get people, kids, youngsters and adults, to actually enjoy fitness rather than just doing press-ups and sit-ups.”

His own live sessions immediately attracted hundreds of views, and then he launched the 9Twelve Online Rugby Academy, a coaching school with past and present Ospreys Ashley Beck (now with Worcester) and Rhys Webb, aimed at nine- to twelve-year-olds. A prolific poster on social media, his feed and sessions have alleviated the boredom of thousands of rugby players during the pandemic. The work also reignited his passion for the sport. “Over the summer I started building and building with more people starting to get involved and I just started to miss rugby a lot more than I realised. 

“I was doing rugby-specific stuff and then had James Hook, Leigh Halfpenny, Josh Navidi, a lot of the Welsh guys, come on to do a skills sessions and, when I started talking to them again, then I started getting a buzz back for rugby.

“I even got to a point when I turned to my wife and I said, ‘do you think I can go back and play sevens?’ Just to get a bit of rugby in there. 

“I think that’s my ego talking a little bit to say, ‘oh yeah, you still got a few years left, you’re still young’. But one regret I had was that I didn’t get on the sevens circuit when I was a kid.

“When I look now at the places they go and the experiences they get...  most of the players my age all went and loved it. I don’t know how I didn’t get on that really.”

So, is he making a comeback? “Nah, health and everything else comes first, so I’m sticking to coaching.”

When he runs through his highlights reel – which includes age-grade rugby at the U20 World Championship with Wales, playing alongside his childhood hero James Hook and when he was rumoured to be close to the 2015 Rugby World Cup squad – Ben highlights one moment. Or rather one feeling that he’s never felt again. “I was lucky I got to play in Judgment Day at the Millennium Stadium [when all four Welsh sides play], with fifty-odd thousand watching,” he says. “That was amazing, that was probably my highlight and it’s those type of moments that I do miss. It’s something I try to replicate now but it’s hard to get that same feeling. I’ve done some stupid fitness challenges over the last two years: rowing a marathon or doing Iron Man-style challenges at the gym, where you run a marathon and row a marathon in a day. But it’s not the same...

“In the first year of retiring you try and replace that same feeling that you had with rugby, the same euphoria, the same adrenaline rush, with something else...”

He didn’t succeed, not entirely, but bringing rugby back into his life through his sessions has bridged the gap somewhat. “I don’t need to replace [rugby] now, because it’s still here, even though I’m not playing it, I feel as if it’s still exciting doing something I love, getting my hands on the ball again, even if it’s just passing the ball over rugby post.”

Aside from continuing to bridge the gap between grassroots and the elite by sharing his professional lessons with the wider world from his small corner of the Old Alleynians ground in south London (where there is a shed for his equipment and a matted area for his drills), Ben also has elite ambitions. He is hoping to get into a professional set-up “in the next couple of years, if an offer came up that would be awesome”, but in the meantime is happy broadcasting to his virtual world. “My wife said to me yesterday, ‘how does it feel that you’re now more well-known in rugby circles than you were when you played?’ 

“Yeah, it doesn’t say much about my career,” he admits, adding, “I only started rugby training a few months ago.”

But with millions catching a glimpse of his posts since, there’s a lot of people glad that he did. 

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by James Cannon

This extract was taken from issue 13 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.