Meet Tank Lanning, who has played the bounce for most of his life, and who loves the game not just for its finesse, not just for its rough and tumble, but for what it has taught him about life on and off the field. He’ll be telling lively, action-packed rugby stories on the Change Exchange, and here he begins by telling his own.
It first happened when playing schoolboy rugby on a Saturday morning. The scrum did not set correctly and my head went straight into the opposition loosehead prop’s leg. A few stars, a bit of pain, but mostly that feeling down my right arm that you get when you stick your finger in the plug, or touch the neighbours electric fence. White hot at the base of the neck, down to pins and needles in the hand.
Into the school san for a few hours, a missed practice or two while things settled, but back in the blue jersey for the next game. A stinger they might call it in today’s parlance.
A few more similar episodes sent up what should have been red flags, but trips to various chiropractors, biokineticists and physiotherapists, along with proud selections into a couple of representative sides, kept the body in some form of tact, and the mind on future.
Also, I also absolutely LOVED the game, and all that came with it. Post-match beers and the UCT pub with team mates – many of whom remain close friends today – after scrumming against the all provincial Hammies front row.
Giving the Naas Botha-led Blue Bulls 30 points at a packed Newlands. Taking on the late Frans “Domkrag” Erasmus in a very feisty game against EP. Taking five punches to the forehead from my fellow WP lock during a scrum in an Intervarsity game at the legendary Danie Craven stadium.
“Klein Saterdag” beers with team mates after Wednesday’s traditional koppestamp session on the Green Mile.
And I even managed to squeeze in a post grad diploma in marketing after eking out a B.Soc.Sci that had started out as a Business Science. Life could actually not have gotten a whole lot better.
And then it ended. I remember the game like it was yesterday. NNK (Noordelikes) away. Again the scrum does not set correctly and NNK remain standing, which sees us hurtle into their legs with the full force of our locks and loose-forwards behind us. Finger in the plug. White hot at the base of the neck. For the last time.
At age 24, my rugby career was over as two discs in my neck (C4 and C5) finally herniated to squeeze in on my spinal cord and reduce my right arm to a piece of raw calamari.
A week in a hospital bed tied to a traction machine that had weights attached to a sling around my jaw bought me a few years, but that surgeon’s scalpel was always going to visit.
The single fusion operation, where they replace the disk with either a piece of your hip or some cow bone and stabilise it with a piece of titanium down the front of the spine, is now commonplace in rugby, with many players coming back to play. But mine required a double fusion and it’s simply too dangerous to carry on playing with that much of your neck immobilized.
I chose the cow instead of my hip by the way, and this is not a sad story. Rugby is an amazing sport that teaches you about much more than just passing or kicking a rugby ball. Not only do you make friends for life, the game also offers fantastic life lessons in the form of character assessment, working with others in a team, and key decision making.
The game afforded me some truly amazing opportunities, and it gives those of us fortunate to be fathers an awesome platform for those special real dad moments. But perhaps more on those further down the line.
It would be pretty easy to dwell on my misfortune, but just one visit to the quadriplegics that the Chris Burger Petro Jackson Players Fund look after is enough to put a stop to that nonsense.
Yes it was a proper change moment in my life, but I actually got lucky, and consider myself incredibly fortunate to have had my time as a player. Hence my remaining in the game as a coach, administrator, columnist, media analyst and sponsorship strategist.
I look forward to sharing a few rugby related tales on this really cool Change Exchange platform from BrightRock.
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