The wife of former Wales rugby international Alix Popham has opened up on her fears he might not be around to see their daughter grow up.
In an emotional interview with BBC Sport, both Popham and his wife, Mel, discussed their experiences after he was diagnosed with early onset dementia at the age of just 41.
The former back-rower’s doctors estimate he suffered 100,000 sub-concussive blows during his 14-year career as a rugby player.
Awareness of concussion in rugby has been raised in recent years, but when Popham was playing, particularly towards the start of his career in the late 90s, its effects were not so widely recognised.
Known for his physicality and abrasiveness, he put his body on the line week after week.
“He knew – and any rugby player knew – that they were putting their bodies on the line and they knew the toll it would take,” Mel Popham told BBC Sport in a tearful interview.
“He gave his heart, body and soul to rugby. He completely did.
“But he didn’t know that he was giving his brain.
“Ultimately if somebody had told Alix: ‘You might not be here to walk your daughters down the aisle or even see them graduate university, be a dad to them’, would he have continued to play? Probably not.”
In 2011, at the age of 31, Popham was forced to retire due to a shoulder injury.
But events in 2019 concerned himself and his family. His wife recalls him turning the grill on and forgetting about it and getting lost on a familiar bike ride.
“Alix set the kitchen on fire,” she revealed. “He forgot he’d put the grill on and closed it. Darcy [their daughter] was in her high chair, I was upstairs and could smell burning.
“That was pretty frightening.
“Then, a week later, he came home from a bike ride visibly shaken and upset. It’s a bike ride he’s done numerous times and he said he got lost. He came to a point where he didn’t know where to go and had to retrace his route on his Strava app.
“He came home and broke down to me. Then he went to see the GP.”
When asked what her biggest fear was, she responded: “It’s watching the lights fading gradually in him. Watching those changes.
"My biggest fear is Alix ending up in a nursing home. And for my daughter, my biggest fear is her losing her dad; him being here but not being the same Alix."
In addition to Popham, former England internationals Steve Thompson and Michael Lipman - both also under the age of 45 - have also gone public about their early onset dementia.
Those three, along with five other former rugby union players who have been diagnosed are seeking to bring legal proceedings against World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union in England and the Welsh Rugby Union over what they claim is their failure to protect them from the risks caused by concussions.
The legal claims could well only be the beginning, with rugby now left facing a potentially very different future.
