Steve Thompson celebrating England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup success
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)All that Steve Thompson wants for Christmas is a quiet few days with his family — and to get his hands on the retro Commodore 64 computer games console coming his way.
Two years ago, England’s Rugby World Cup-winning hooker had a torrid festive time. The Thompson family were only just working out how to navigate his early onset dementia, and the result was a “complete nightmare”.
Last year, the Thompsons had a cracker of a Christmas and, this time, Thompson, his wife Steph and their four children will open presents, eat buffet food and stay in their onesies.
The former Northampton and England star will have a vital nap in the afternoon, and only on Boxing Day will the family sit down to their traditional Christmas lunch.
Thompson cannot remember anything about winning the World Cup with England in 2003, but he will get the shivers when meeting up with his East Midlands Under-19s team-mates.
Thoughts of the Commodore 64 have triggered a sense of nostalgia, while the longer the family live with Thompson’s dementia, the more they know how to handle it.
“I don’t get goosebumps with the World Cup, but when I meet up with my old mates and we talk about the East Midlands Under-19s, which I can remember, I get them. I get all excited about that,” Thompson told Standard Sport.
“But England, it’s just not there. Even when I pick out my England caps, it’s as though they’re someone else’s. There’s no log that goes with them to make the emotion. I start thinking, ‘I should do, I should [remember that]’, but there’s nothing tied to them at all.
“Whereas for Christmas I’m going to get a Commodore 64 — and I’m so excited about it, the nostalgia.
“I’ve got that big chunk of my twenties that just isn’t there, then my thirties are just slowly starting to disappear. The Seventies and the Eighties, I really love the music. My kids, bless them, are going to live in a time warp, I think!
“Last Christmas was brilliant, because Steph completely planned it. The Christmas before that had been a complete nightmare. We still didn’t really know how to cope with what was going on, how to cope with me. And then I ended up just falling apart, that’s when my memory starts really going. So, last year, we sat down and worked out what we would do. I love my cooking, but Steph said, ‘Look, rather than you doing the big meal on Christmas Day, we’ll just do finger food all day’.
“First thing in the morning, get up, open the presents, build the toys, have bacon butties, we played for a bit and then I went and had a sleep. If I don’t have a nap, then, as the day goes on, I get worse, especially when emotions are heightened.
“Then Boxing Day is all about the dinner, we stay in our onesies, it’s our little bubble and it works really well.”
Thompson was one of the first rugby players to launch a legal case for compensation against the game’s authorities, claiming the sport had left him with permanent brain damage.
More than two years on, Thompson’s fight goes on, while the scale of rugby’s head-injury crisis continues to spiral. Thompson and many others believe they will ultimately be found to have suffered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
At just 44, Thompson must confront the symptoms of his brain injury just to get through the day.
The 73-cap England front-rower works with pressure group Progressive Rugby, agitating for vastly-extended safety measures at both elite and grassroots level around head-injury protocols and player welfare.
Thompson revealed he and his family are contacted on an almost daily basis by current or former players, both professional and amateur, and their loved ones, who are experiencing symptoms of neurological problems.
“If we are talking hundreds who have been diagnosed now, then we’ve got to be talking thousands who actually have problems,” said Thompson. “Ideally, we’d get rugby completely away from CTE, the commodity of the game is the players, and they must be looked after.
We received a lot of abuse from people thinking we were trying to ruin rugby.
“These people are suffering, they are losing wives, they are considering suicide. They feel so lost.
“It’s hard to keep pushing for change in rugby. We received a lot of abuse at first from people thinking we were trying to ruin the sport.
“At times you do hit walls and think, ‘I can’t do this any more’, but then you hear another story and you know you have to keep fighting.
“The messages of support really rejuvenate you, especially from people who say they thought we were just after money but now understand what we’re trying to do.”
