Sport Hockey
Shona McCallin wants
to raise awareness about
concussion after her
long road to recovery
Fiona Tomas
T
hree weeks after
being concussed
playing for England
in February last year,
Shona McCallin
jovially posted videofootage of the incident on her
social-media channels,
reliving the moment
with thousands of
followers.
“Top tip: don’t let a
shoulder hit you in the
side of your head. It
really hurts and you
might get concussion,”
she wrote.
After being
accidentally clattered in
the head by an Argentine
opponent, the Rio
Olympics gold medallist
fell to her knees. Within
three seconds, she stood
up and began striding towards the
sidelines, serenely blinking away
the shock as her team-mates
played on.
McCallin did not fully
comprehend the enormity of the
injury which would force her out
of the game for 17 months.
“It’s essentially like having a bit
of a hangover,” McCallin, 27, says.
“You’re just a bit sensitive to
everything, you don’t feel quite
right, you’re a bit agitated,
everything can be a bit too much
and when it gets too much you just
want to hide in a dark room.
“The most frustrating thing is
that you don’t know when it’s
going to come. I could have seven
days doing exactly the same thing
every day, I would be absolutely
fine, and then I’d feel awful. It can
just come on, so in terms of
planning and trying to live a
normal life, it was impossible.
“There would be many times
when I would plan to see a friend,
but then have headaches and I’d be
feeling really sensitive to
everything and just need to rest.”
McCallin made her return for
Great Britain in a 22-player squad
at an acclimatisation camp in
Tokyo last month.
She played four games during
the camp and returned injury-free
- an all-round success considering
she also had been battling a knee
injury. As a result, she remains in
contention to be picked today
for England’s squad for the
EuroHockey Championships,
which begin in Antwerp on
Friday week. Victory would seal
Olympic qualification for Mark
Hager’s side after missing the
chance to do so as part of Great
Britain at this year’s inaugural Pro
League competition.
“I knew I wouldn’t go out there
[to Japan] and try to be the player
that I was before the injury, that
just wasn’t going to happen,”
McCallin says.
“It was just about keeping
things simple and enjoying being
back out there and not taking
anything for granted. There’s a
phrase when you’re coming back
from injury, which is ‘Keep
winning’. Don’t push
yourself too far.”
McCallin is not alone in
experiencing concussion
within her hockey circle.
Alex Danson, the
England captain, remains
sidelined after hitting her
head on a concrete seat
while holidaying in
Kenya last year.
Danson later revealed
she lost her ability to
read following the
incident. McCallin now
wants to raise awareness
about concussion –
irrespective of whether it is
sports-related or not – and is
determined to shatter the taboo
that it is little more than a brief
blackout and a bout of sickness.
“It’s not unusual for people to
have that opinion of it,” McCallin
says. “I think what needs to be
explored a little bit more is, with
concussion there’s so many strands
to it. It’s like classing every ankle
injury as just an ankle injury,
whether that could be a little
sprain or fracturing every single
bone and destroying every single
ligament – you’d still class it as an
ankle injury.
“The main symptom for me
was headaches. I probably had a
headache every day for seven,
eight or nine months. I would get
eye fatigue and facial numbness all
down my left side where I got hit.
Those were the ones that stopped
me from doing stuff.”
While the management of
concussion and mild traumatic
brain injury remains an area of
clinical uncertainty for most sports
medicine professionals, there is
conflicting evidence as to whether
females are more adversely
affected after concussion than
males, particularly in relation to
an athlete’s length of recovery.
McCallin even watched videos
of rugby players “getting smashed”
on the pitch in a bid to try to
categorise her own head trauma.
“My research has shown that themost lingering ones are the ones
where you don’t get knocked out
and you get hit on the side or the
softer part of your head, rather
than full on,” she says.
“There’s also a rotational aspect
of it. Rather than just getting
headbutted full on, when your
head goes back and forth, and
that’s it, you get hit on the side,
which is followed by a swinging
motion as well. I almost hit the
jackpot, because I got all three
of those.”
Should England fail to win the
EuroHockey Championships, then
Great Britain’s last shot at Olympic
qualification will be a two-legged
qualifier in the autumn.
McCallin could yet feature at
another Olympics after Tokyo- should Great Britain book their
place – but overcoming concussion
has taught the 73-time capped
international that running out^
for her country, whatever the
occasion, is worth its weight
in gold. “Being out for so long has
definitely made me appreciate
playing international hockey,” she
says. “It’s a cliche, you don’t know
what you’ve got until it’s gone and
that is certainly the case for me.”
Life on hold:
Shona McCallin,
pictured with her
dog, says living a
normal life was
‘impossible’; (top
right) playing for
England in 2017‘It’s like a hangover. I
had a headache every
day for nine months’
‘You
don’t feel
right and
when it
gets too
much
you want
to hide
in a dark
room’
INTERVIEW
The Daily Telegraph Wednesday 7 August 2019 *** 15
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