Head On

An All Black's memoir of rugby, dementia, and the hidden cost of success

'The best sports book I have read in decades' - Kevin Norquay, Stuff

'Startlingly honest' - Phil Gifford

'A brilliant read. Bold, brave and honest' - Mike Hosking, Newstalk ZB

Carl Hayman, All Black #1000, once the most highly prized player in world rugby and a giant of the game in every sense - someone who was always respected, even feared. But at the end of seventeen years as a professional rugby player, the last eight played with the sole aim of setting up his family's future, Hayman's life began to unravel in nightmarish fashion.

Head On is about the pressures on the modern athlete, where physical performance and commerce collide, and players become victims of their own success.

Exploited then left out in the cold, Hayman is now left counting the hidden cost of the achievements that would have exceeded any young rugby player's dreams. He now fears both the known and the unknown with equal trepidation as he looks for answers to dementia and a degenerative brain condition called CTE.

In Head On, Hayman relives a remarkable rugby career, with revelations about the shock All Blacks loss to France in the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the decisions to leave New Zealand and play for the Newcastle Falcons in England, in doing so becoming one of the best-paid players on the planet, and how being put on the fast track to the All Blacks as a youngster combined with the Southern Man rugby ethos in Dunedin caused him to develop a dangerous relationship with alcohol.

This book is about how we can better understand the unintended consequences of the decisions we make, and how we can better serve the next generation.