School rugby spinal injuries forge close friendship
Two teens, two broken necks, two remarkable journeys towards recovery. Conor and Ollie were once strangers, but after suffering "catastrophic" injuries while playing schoolboy rugby they found a new friendship.
Conor Tweedy and Ollie Bierhoff were sporting rivals and should have been competing against each other in this year's schoolboy rugby union championship.
But instead of going head-to-head on the rugby field, they found themselves side-by-side in the Princess Alexandra Hospital with catastrophic spinal injuries.
Ollie was the first to break his neck in what became a cluster of four serious Queensland schoolboy rugby union spinal injuries in just three weeks.
Eight days later, Conor became the third.
Both Ollie and Conor were paralysed from the chest down and told their chances for recovery were slim.
Only time would tell whether any movement would return.
A 'massive crack' then no feeling
July 13 this year was the last day of the pre-season rugby camp for Toowoomba Grammar School boarder, Ollie.
It was a nice cool morning in the city 125 kilometres west of Brisbane.
"The sun was out. It was a really good rugby day and we were doing a training drill we'd done thousands of times before," Ollie said.
He was "the cattle dog" of his team, always running and "tackling like there's no tomorrow". It was his last chance for selection into the prestigious "firsts" team, and he was giving it all he had when he lost balance in a routine training drill and ploughed head-first into the ground.
"I heard a massive crack in my neck and I lost all feeling from my neck to my toes. It was the worst pain I've ever felt in my life," Ollie said.
In spite of the pain, Ollie knew to remain calm. "Mum and Dad brought us up thinking positive thoughts. I knew I shouldn't scream or anything, or it might get worse."
More than 600 kilometres away, near the small town of Rowena in north-west New South Wales, Ollie's parents Bernie and Colleen Bierhoff got the call and made the eight-hour dash to Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital.
"I don't think I've said more Hail Marys in my life," father Bernie said.
Emergency surgery repaired Ollie's broken C5-6 vertebrae, which had crushed his spinal cord. He was transferred to intensive care with no indication as to whether he would be able to move his arms or legs again.
'I was pretty sure I'd broken my neck'
Eight days later a procession of bagpipers and a raucous chorus of war cries kicked off Brisbane's highly competitive private schoolboy rugby union season.
Conor, then 16, from St Joseph's College, Gregory Terrace, arrived early. It was the first game of the year and he wanted to watch his mates play.
His mother told him about the two Toowoomba boys who had broken their necks the previous week.
"It didn't really mean anything to me. I just thought 'that's not going to happen to me'," Conor said.
Like Ollie, Conor was a gifted and ambitious player. It was in his blood; his father, Sean Tweedy, was a former Queensland Reds player.
Conor was playing a new position, tight head prop. His job was to scrum in the front row, taking the weight of his team pushing from behind and the opposing team pushing against him.
"I remember a lot of people saying to me, 'oh every mother's nightmare is having a child in the rugby front row', and I just used to laugh it off, not really understanding the significance of that. But I did learn," Conor's mother Rebecca said.
The first scrum came 10 minutes into his game. It collapsed and the teams repacked for a second time.
This scrum collapsed too. Only this time, Conor didn't get up.
"I remember twisting and then I heard a crack. I felt something shoot down my body and then I just couldn't move. I was pretty sure I had broken my neck," Conor said.
His mother witnessed the accident from the grandstand.
"I realised something was drastically wrong. I could see that he was completely paralysed, and his neck was twisted to the side. I just collapsed because I appreciate what that means for us and for him," Rebecca said.
Like Ollie, Conor knew not to panic. He even tried to calm his mother, telling her he could feel his legs when he couldn't.
"I lied because I thought it would relax Mum but I don't think it worked," he said.
At the Princess Alexandra Hospital, Conor was delivered a similar diagnosis and prognosis to Ollie. A broken C4-5 crushed his spinal cord, impacting the nerves that controlled his body from the chest down.
'They actually called me a miracle'
The day after his surgery, Ollie's spirits were surprisingly high. He had barely any movement, just a slight flicker in his toes. So he wriggled his toes all that first day. The following day he could feel his foot, so he spent all that day trying to move his foot.
And so it went. Each day brought a bit more movement and sensation in Ollie's body and he worked hard to keep it moving. On day six, Ollie stood up for the first time since his accident.
"Then they asked me if I'd like to take a few steps and I jumped straight into it," Ollie said.
"They actually called me a miracle, they said they'd never seen anything like it."
The Bierhoffs' elation at Ollie's progress was shattered when Conor arrived at the same hospital.
"Just to think that there was another family with a healthy, strong, young man … it was frightening. And it didn't matter that we didn't know them. We almost felt like we were related at that moment," Ollie's mother Colleen said.
The hospital grapevine was abuzz with the devastating story of the two teenage boys who'd broken their necks playing rugby and the corridors were packed with the steady stream of visiting mates and Wallabies, including Quade Cooper and John Eales.
Word inevitably filtered back to both families of the other's progress and about a week after Conor's injury the two mothers met.
"At that stage Ollie had made huge progress, he was up walking and it was fantastic to hear. But it was also difficult because Conor was not doing anything at all," Rebecca said.
Conor had woken from surgery with no movement below his shoulders and his condition remained virtually unchanged for three weeks.
"I think I knew in the back of my mind I might not walk again. But I wanted to stay strong and just accept what happened to me," Conor said.
"Seeing the Tweedy family, I found it really hard. I had to be respectful of what they were going through," Ollie's mother Colleen said.
There were discussions about whether the two boys might benefit from being moved to the same ward together.
Conor's father is an expert in the field of disability and Paralympic classification. He was worried about the two boys meeting when Ollie was powering ahead every day and Conor's progress was at a standstill.
He feared Conor might see it as a reflection of his own ability or that he wasn't trying hard enough.
Conor admitted "it was pretty annoying".
"It's like this kid was just walking after a couple of weeks and I was just still lying in bed," Conor said.
Medical experts don't know how an individual will be impacted when they first present with a spinal cord injury.
"You can assess them and you will see a picture of what's happening but that doesn't necessarily tell you about what things are going to be like in a month or two months or six months' time," Professor Tim Geraghty from the Princess Alexandra Spinal Injuries Unit said.
Two people can look like they've had a similar injury in a similar way, but the injury that's been caused to the spinal cord can be quite different.
"For the person who's having the slower recovery it probably means that the spinal cord was more severely damaged in the first place," he said.
"It is almost a wait-and-see exercise to see how it's going to pan out."
From rugby rivals to mates on the mend
Ollie and Conor finally met when they were placed side-by-side in the hospital's spinal injuries unit, and they hit it off straight away.
"We became pretty good mates pretty quickly," Conor said.
"It wasn't awkward at all," Ollie said of when they met. "He was really happy for me and I was just really positive for him."
They are both still "rugby fanatics", in spite of their injuries.
The pair worked out that if they hadn't been injured they would have been rivals on the rugby field, representing their schools at the last game of the season.
"We were thinking, 'yay, this is going to be a great friendship', however Ollie just got too good and he was discharged," Conor's mother Rebecca said.
As Ollie returned to recuperate on his family's cotton property, in the spinal unit Conor's progress was still very slow.
But then, about a week after Ollie's departure, Conor's nerves began to spark just below his injury level. He started recovering subtle movement.
First it was his fingers, then it was wrist extension, and then some leg movement. Each recovered movement was a small step closer to independence.
"I don't want to have to rely on other people to move me around. I want to get to the stage where I'm walking and I can just go out and do whatever I want, whenever I want, by myself, without everyone else knowing about it," Conor said.
Ten weeks after his rugby accident, Conor stood with assistance for the first time, but the physical and mental exertion of it makes his head spin.
"My blood pressure just drops and I'm super woozy and I can barely see. Then I've got to think of tensing my core, standing up right, firing off my quads, planting my feet and curling my toes. I've got to think of so much stuff," Conor said.
But it's worth it.
"It's sick being back up, tall again, standing up pretty much by myself. It makes me feel like I can go all the way," he said.
Conor takes his first steps
Conor had been working on standing for two weeks when his physio took him by surprise and said "how about we try walking today".
"It was pretty exciting. I didn't know if I could. But my physio knows what he's talking about," Conor said.
With minimal assistance, Conor stood up at the parallel bars. A group of spinal unit physios and patients gathered around to watch.
"All eyes were on me. I was under pressure but quietly confident," Conor said.
He focused all his concentration on activating the muscles in his stronger left leg to take the first, halting step. Two physios helped guide his weaker right leg forward.
Two or three steps was all he could manage in that first session and it took a couple of days of rest to recover. Today, he's taking 20 steps before turning around, resting, and taking 20 steps back.
"I reckon he's in with a real shot of walking in some way or form in the future. He's working hard and if he wants it, he'll get it," Conor's father Sean said.
But there are still so many "little battles ahead" for Conor. "He still needs help getting up, getting dressed," Sean said.
Cluster of teen spinal injuries
The rugby community was rocked by the four serious injuries in just three weeks. Then, last month, another boy, Alex Noble, from St Ignatius College Riverview in NSW, suffered a similar injury in rugby training.
In response to the cluster, Rugby Australia has commissioned a review into the safety of the game for school-aged children.
Rugby Australia chief executive, Raelene Castle, said while "it's been 10 years since we had a significant spinal injury", the recent cluster is "concerning".
"The inquiry is about understanding if there's anything we could've done better. So in the education and coaching leading up to the injuries, during the injury process itself, but also at the back end of that, what we've done to support those players."
The findings of the review are expected to be released early next year.
Boys reunite
At his six-week check-up, Ollie and his parents returned to the spinal unit to call on Conor and were amazed at the progress he'd made.
Ollie and Conor chucked a rugby ball around like old mates.
"I talked to him for a good hour, how the physio is, how all the people in the rehab are and just giving each other a bit of stick about the rugby," Ollie said, before it was time to head back to his final term at boarding school.
Neither Conor nor Ollie will ever play rugby again. But they haven't lost their love of the game.
Ollie hopes he can stay involved at a coaching level.
Conor already has his sights set on wheelchair rugby after joining current Paralympic gold medallists Chris Bond and Ryan Scott in a training session.
"I'm pretty motivated if there's something that I really want to do. Going to the Paralympics would be pretty cool," Conor said.
"But hopefully I'll be too able-bodied. Hopefully."
Bernie thinks both boys have certainly "dug deep" to stay positive about the darkest challenge in their young lives.
"I can't imagine how hard it's been for them. It's a life-changing experience that only those two together know what that's like. They've just been really, really courageous," he said.
Watch Close Contact on Australian Story at 8:00pm on Monday on ABCTV and iview.
Credits
Producer: Kristine Taylor
Photography: Anthony Sines, Bierhoff family, Tweedy family
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