Looking back, looking forward

As Disability Now goes to press, England’s progress at the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand is uncertain. But as they talk ahead of the tournament, Sunil Peck discovers that Matt Hampson is as optimistic about this as about everything

It’s quite funny because I do this big team talk and I’m really trying to motivate the guys and we’re in this huddle. We go into a scrummage, we hit and the scrum collapses and it’s quite comical looking back on it because I just think what a prat.”

Matt Hampson is describing the footage of the rugby scrum which collapsed during an Under-21 England training session and which crushed him under fifteen teammates. His neck was broken and his life was saved by a quick-thinking referee who resuscitated him on the pitch.

“I’ve watched it back twice now and you can’t really see too much but the most harrowing thing about it is that I see the scrum collapse and then the camera goes off and goes back to the guys training while I’m being resuscitated. It focuses on their faces and they’re in complete and utter shock and devastation. Some of them look like they’re going to be in floods of tears. That was pretty tough.”

Six years on from that overcast March day in Northampton in 2005, the former Leicester Tigers and England prop loves the game as much as he did as a “boisterous” five-year-old when his mother first took him to the local rugby club in a desperate attempt to find an outlet for his boundless energy.

“I’ve still got that fight in me. Sometimes I struggle when there’s someone annoying me on the pitch. You can see me moving in my chair and actually wanting to run on and knock someone’s head off.”

Despite his happy memories of playing rugby, Matt is anxious to avoid dwelling on what might have been. Instead, his goals are to support other disabled people through his charity The Matt Hampson Foundation and to enjoy life.

Paralysed below the neck, Matt requires full-time care and is hooked up to a ventilator which helps him breathe and which makes a cooing sound every four seconds.

The sound has attracted quite a lot of attention during the TV and radio interviews Matt has been doing to promote his new book, Engage. So I ask him if he’s beginning to tire of the attention it has been receiving?

“Not really, I’m let’s say, pretty unsubtle. I’ve got a pipe hanging from my neck, I’m in a large powered wheelchair and I think people are always going to ask and are always going to be interested. The more notice people take of the vent the better because they will know that there are people on ventilators getting out there and living a life.”

“Engage” is the last word Matt heard before the scrum collapsed. It gives a fascinating insight into the blood and brutality of the rugby field, the times Matt shared with a “crazy gang” of characters in Stoke Mandeville and adapting to life as a disabled person.

“Writing the book was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, to go through that emotional rollercoaster. People asked me if I was looking forward to it coming out and I said no because I’m quite a private person anyway and you’re almost exposing yourself. Even people that know me very very well didn’t know everything that’s in the book. I don’t think anyone knew how I felt about certain scenarios because I hadn’t been there. The book is very deep, real and raw.”

Matt “Hambo” Hampson was selected for Leicester Tigers academy when he was 16. He was suddenly training alongside Tigers stalwarts and England internationals and a call-up to the international side one day became as he puts it “definitely attainable”.

“It hit home that I wasn’t particularly academic and I didn’t really have a niche or anything apart from rugby. So I thought I might as well go for it and channel all my energy into that.”

Although the accident scuppered Matt’s international ambitions, one element of the game which he loved and which he rediscovered with other patients during 17 months in Stoke Mandeville was the camaraderie. There were nights as raucous as any he’d had with his Tigers teammates; the laughter and tears when a person’s bowels gave way during the transfer from wheelchair to spinal plinth and the time a group watched porn DVDs which had been smuggled in to see who could get aroused first.

“Spinal injury can either make you or break you,” says Matt who was shouted at by staff for lurching back into Stoke Mandeville after drunken nights out.

“A lot of people in Stoke Mandeville had decided to just get on with it and they’re the people I associated with. I wanted to associate with people who were strong and who were still up for a good laugh even though they’d been dealt this bad blow.”

Matt split up with his girlfriend while there and there have been other dark days since his accident, but his tough education on the rugby field has shaped his fiercely positive outlook.

“It’s very much the Tigers mentality that when you first go and train, the coaches don’t speak to you for about the first two months, they don’t really want to know you until you’ve proved yourself. They call it earning your stripes. Tigers are renowned not for being the most skillful or intelligent rugby team in the world, but for being the most hard-working down-to-earth team with a never-say-die attitude.”

He also draws tremendous strength from his family too; “I dread to think what it would have been like without a close family”.

But to what extent has his family’s support been important in preventing him from sinking into a pit of despair like Dan James, another rugby player who became paralysed when a scrum collapsed but who went to Dignitas to die?

“I don’t know. I can only speak for myself but I can’t think what it might’ve been like without a close family. But I’m not Dan James and I haven’t got his family and I don’t know if they’re any different to mine.”

Matt had travelled to Stoke Mandeville to see Dan and give him some encouragement and was “very shocked” to hear of his death.

“You start questioning. Am I doing the right thing? Is life worth living? But yes, it is. I live a great fulfilling life and I do things I couldn’t have even dreamed of before my accident. The people who I help with the Foundation and writing a book. Old thicko Matt at school, just a stupid old rugby player. Writing a book? Where did that come from? That’s pretty special to me because I’ve never thought of myself as being academic and being able to have the brain capacity to write a book, so it’s something I’m very proud of.”

As well as the friends Matt made in Stoke Mandeville, he still enjoys knocking about with his old teammates.

“They don’t mollycoddle me at all.” He laughs and says  “I wouldn’t have it, I’d tell them to piss off! They treat me as the same old Hambo and that’s the way I want to be treated. They’re mindful that I can’t drink what I used to drink or go out as much as I used to so they don’t put too much pressure on me. But they still give me loads of banter.”

Leicester Tigers is his second home and he talks with affection about the supporters and ground staff who have supported him through his rehabilitation and who greet him with a “hi Hambo how are you doing” on match days. He writes a monthly column for a rugby magazine and he’s a coach at Oakham School – “it’s the next best thing to playing”. But does he ever have doubts about coaching a game that almost killed him?

“No, not really. It’s quite a strange scenario because I go and see kids at school and at Tigers training courses and initially I thought, God, I don’t really want to go along and talk to the kids because I don’t want to turn them off playing rugby; how would they react to me? But it’s had the opposite effect. They take on board what I say and respond to it and it motivates them to play and they love it more.”

Matt set up his charity in February. He hopes that its profile will be raised by the success of his book.

“We’ve helped seven or eight people so far and we want to find people who can benefit not just from money but from support from me, so we can help each other out.”

Some people have described Matt as an inspiration. He doesn’t think he is though.

“Inspiration is a very strong word. Maybe not an inspiration but maybe someone who’s pretty normal, down to earth and realistic about my situation. I do want to make a difference to people in a similar situation.”

The Rugby World Cup, according to Matt, will be the most open for some time.

“New Zealand are obviously the favourites but they’ve choked in world cups in past years so we’ll see. I’ll probably bet on Australia, or maybe Argentina as an outside bet.”

Matt is not one for setting himself long-term goals and apart from enjoying the World Cup and making a success of his charity and book, he’s quite happy to concentrate on getting on with living life to the full.

“I try not to look too far into the future because I don’t think it’s that healthy. I’ll sound like Mr Cliché now, but I think you should take each day as it comes. A big dream of mine was to go over to New York and I managed to go over last year. I try to channel my energy into what I can do rather than what I can’t. I surround myself with people who want to live life and have a good craic and a laugh.”