Injured rugby players in New Year’s honours
Nick Webborn OBE, Chair of the British Paralympic Association, was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Nick Webborn OBE, Chair of the British Paralympic Association, was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year’s Honours.
A leading sports medicine specialist, with particular expertise in the area of disability, Tokyo 2020 was his 11th Paralympic Games.
Nick was a newly qualified doctor 40 years ago and serving in the Royal Air Force at RAF Wattisham near Ipswich. Playing scrum half for the station rugby team against the University of East Anglia, he was tackled in a way which drove his head into the ground and dislocated his spine at the base of his neck. Surgery at a local hospital went badly and a further operation at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge followed. After a couple of weeks, Nick was transferred to the National Spinal Injuries Unit at Stoke Mandeville and his sister, a qualified nurse, travelled with him on the three-hour ambulance journey.
One day, about six weeks after the injury, I found that I could bend my thumb."
Nick Webborn OBE
“We arrived at the much-vaunted spinal unit to a shock, going from a cosy side room in a modern hospital to an open ward in a collection of wooden huts from the original hospital that Ludwig Guttmann started in 1944. I was also told that I would be flat on my back for three months. The people made this place special – the nurses, the orderlies, the therapists. They gave comfort and humour but also a confidence that they fully understood the issues I would face in my future.
“One day, about six weeks after the injury, I found that I could bend my thumb. With huge excitement I told the consultant on the ward round, who replied: “Well if you can’t extend it then it will be no use to you!” Exasperated I didn’t know how to respond but my father wrote “The fightback starts today" in the diary they kept for visitors to write messages in and to sign. And it did!”
“I started getting more movement and after a while was able to stand in water and later take faltering steps between parallel bars. I spent eight months in Stoke Mandeville before transferring to the RAF Rehabilitation Unit at Headley Court. A wheelchair and a walking stick were to be my new companions, but I was fighting back and returned to working in the RAF until my discharge in 1985.”
“During the 1980-81 season when I was injured, there were 13 players with spinal cord injuries from rugby. After my discharge I became involved with the RFU under then president Ian Beer who created an Injury Working Party. Along with Dr John Silver from Stoke Mandeville, we started investigating injury in rugby using video analysis of games, as collapsing of the scrum was then a major issue, as well as foul play not spotted by the referee. We developed several recommendations as a result to improve safety in the sport.”
Investigating rugby injuries and prevention
“My own experience of treatment, my personal understanding of the rehabilitation process and the love of sport took me to a career in Sports Medicine. Forty years on I have been fortunate enough to work at eleven Paralympic Games, one Olympic Games (London 2012) and two Invictus Games. I’ve travelled the world making lifelong friends and colleagues. I took up sport again, although somewhat late, competed in wheelchair tennis for Great Britain and became national doubles champion, before my shoulder decided I should not continue that path.”
“I also developed an academic career, as a world-leading researcher in injury and illness prevention in Paralympic sport as a Clinical Professor in Sport and Exercise Medicine at the University of Brighton and a member of the International Paralympic Committee’s Medical Committee. However more than that I found a purpose and a passion in life that connected me back to sport. In sport and the Paralympic movement I have found both.”
“One can choose to face one's challenge or not. It has not been easy with pain and immobility as part of life but that is the hand I was dealt. I recognise that you need support – family, friends, colleagues – but you also need an environment in which to be able to grow and thrive, which I why I am so pleased to try and help others achieve their goals through sport, now as Chair of the British Paralympic Association, to meet the vision “Through sport to inspire a better world for disabled people”.
“Although the IPF did not exist when I was first injured I have seen how it has grown and helped so many people and it is symbolic of the spirit within the rugby community. I was privileged to attend a ‘learn to sit-ski’ course in Andorra with a group from the Injured Players Foundation and the camaraderie of the injured players and support staff shone through. I am hugely grateful to all those that support and fundraise for this wonderful organisation.”
Gold Paralympic Medallist's MBE
One athlete helped to achieve his goals through sport is Jack Smith, an RFU Injured Players Foundation client, who was one of 12 wheelchair rugby athletes of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, along with Head Coach Paul Shaw, awarded an MBE for services to wheelchair rugby in the New Year Honours List 2022.
Their historic gold-medal win, which drew a television audience of over a million, followed the team’s loss of performance funding after a fifth-place finish at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. Against the backdrop of the global pandemic, they secured funding from commercial sponsors which, alongside philanthropic donations from individual supporters and organisations, as well as UK Sport Aspiration funding, enabled them to develop and instigate a world-class training and competition schedule.
Jack was training five days a week, when he was selected and becoming a Paralympic world champion was, he says: “Just crazy. It really hit us when we got home and saw what it meant to others, it was ‘Wow, this is the real deal!’
“This was my dream for six or seven years and the IPF were so great. I was getting messages from other clients that I hadn’t met. Everyone was fantastic. I’ went to my old club Billingham to show them my medal and take them a vest for the wall.”
Jack’s is an inspiring story. With a diagnosis of Hodgkins Lymphoma at 16, a couple of weeks before his injury playing for Billingham v Darlington in the County Cup, his consultant had told him to “live my life as normal and just carry on playing rugby.”
At North Tees Hospital he had spinal surgery after his injury, before three months’ rehab at The James Cook University Hospital spinal unit.
The MBE is a great honour and I think we all feel it’s an unbelievable recognition of doing something we truly enjoy."
Jack Smith
IPF help and wheelchair rugby a passion
“I went home to my parents, and everything was done for me. My family’s support was massive, the IPF brought me a laptop to help my rehab and a signed England shirt. Later they funded a hand cycle so I could go out at weekends with my dad, Graeme.”
At one point Jack cycled for 12 hours around Brands Hatch to raise funds for the IPF. With vocational rehab, Jack progressed to becoming independent and moved into his own accessible property, with an IPF funded through the ceiling lift. He lives in Sedgefield with girlfriend Emma, who works for the HM Prison and Probation Service.
Wheelchair rugby became Jack’s passion after Sean Lacey from the Spinal Injuries Association encouraged him to go to the local club, The North East Bulls. He progressed to Leicester Tigers Wheelchair Rugby and by hard work and dedication to the GB team. Athletes are classified on levels of ability from 0.5 to 3.5, Jack being classified as 1.
He said: “The MBE is a great honour and I think we all feel it’s an unbelievable recognition of doing something we truly enjoy. I hope it helps with the growth of wheelchair rugby and encourages further funding as we head into the Europeans and beyond.”
