ner and I were talking about it the other
night and we just broke down in tears.”
The 48-year-old enjoyed a career
spanning almost two decades but has
joined a list of more than 250 former
rugby players in league and union who
have a brain injury and intend to seek
damages from the rugby governing
bodies in England and Wales.
He has struggled to come to terms
with a debilitating brain condition forFrancis Maloney, 48, has
dementia after playing in
era when head traumas
were joked about, he
tells Ross Heppenstall Maloney, 48, who has early-onset
dementia, with his partner, NatalieRugby league star was concussed
14 times. The effects are killing him
“I was never worried about dying but,
having been told I have eight to ten
years left to live, I’m scared now.” So
says Francis Maloney, a former rugby
league player diagnosed with early-
onset dementia and probable chronic
traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) on
March 1.
“I’ve always been this little hard-case
who could fight but this is the first time
in my life I have felt vulnerable. My part-which there is little treatment. “I told
my mum I have dementia and her re-
sponse was, ‘You’re hard as nails, you’.
But I said: ‘No, mum, I’m not’ and then
she started crying too.
“It feels like I’m dwindling away and
I recently thought about killing myself.
I thought, ‘I’ve got dementia, I don’t
want someone wiping my arse for me
— what’s the point in even being here?’
I’m struggling big time.”
Maloney grew up in Dewsbury, west
Yorkshire, and as a promising footballer
he spurned the advances of the Not-
tingham Forest manager Brian Clough.
“I wanted to be a rugby league player,
just like my dad,” he says. John Maloney
played 226 games for Hull FC. Maloney
junior made three appearances for
Leeds and went on to represent Feath-Bristol scrum half tells
Will Kelleher how his
club can turn around a
disappointing season
We’re not
trying to
lose games
— a cup
run is
our target
country when Randall was injured in
the autumn.
“He’s a top bloke,” Randall says of
Quirke. “He’s talented not just on the
field but off it, too. He’s into
barbering. He hasn’t cut my hair but I
think I’d let him. The ones he’s done
were not too shabby at all.
“Raffi being with Faf, his defensive
game is good. He’s good at shooting
out the line. Faf is one of the most
disruptive No 9s in the world. He’s
everywhere. He’s always trying to put
pressure on you at scrums and
around the ruck he’s very good at
reading where No 9s are going run.
He’s vocal, like all good No 9s.”
Randall is happy to talk up the
Bears, hunting their first top-tier
European quarter-final; determined
that the worst of 2022 is behind them.
“Trust we’re doing everything to be
in the best position to go out and
win,” is his message to disgruntled
fans. “A good cup run doesn’t turn it
into a great season, but it turns it into
a decent one as European rugby is the
highest level. That’s our goal.”England and his first full Six Nations
campaign.
“We worked hard on our
togetherness, cohesion, and built
something quite strong as a team,
which we all felt was positive. We
built a tight-knit squad off the field.
As a team we did a lot right for most
of the time. We made massive
improvements around creating
opportunities; being in the right areas.
We set the platform around being
able to do that; now it’s how we can
get better at finishing those and what
we can do better to execute.
“We made small improvements on
the field and challenged teams a fair
bit. The results didn’t go our way, but
as a platform we built some good stuff
that can stand us in good stead.”
Today, Randall will face a
formidable foe — the South Africa
World Cup-winning scrum half Faf de
Klerk is playing his last few months at
Sale before departing for Japan in the
summer. Behind him at club level is
the 20-year-old England hot-shot
Raffi Quirke, who played for his“The Premiership hasn’t gone our
way, but we’re still fighting in this
competition and anything can happen
in knockout rugby. We’re all excited.”
There are parallels between the
Bristol and England malaises of 2022
— exciting, young, talented
players promising much,
yet not delivering.
With Randall
partnering with
positive playmaker
Marcus Smith, fans
were excited at the
prospect. But, as we
know, it did not happen
in the Six Nations.
England scored two tries
against teams other than
Italy, lost three times, and fell
well behind the grand slam-winners
France and second-placed Ireland.
Talk to the players, though, and
they believe the cohesiveness they
built in that tournament will bear
fruit soon. Randall is no different.
“I thoroughly enjoyed my time
there,” he says of his two months withF
or a man who has not won a
match since February 26,
Harry Randall remains
remarkably upbeat. You
would expect nothing less
from Eddie Jones’s “zip-zip man” —
the moniker the England head coach
gave to the Bristol Bears scrum half
— who brings liveliness and a high
tempo to games.
That is not to say that Randall is
just the energetic cub among the
bears. Despite being only 24, he can
deliver doses of reality, too, when
looking at Bristol’s tenth-place
standing in the Gallagher Premiership.
“We know as a club in the
Premiership we’ve not had the season
we’ve wanted to,” Randall says. He
notes that the Bears have won only
six of 20 games this year in the
league, despite having finished top in
the regular season last year.
“It’s finding that balance between
feeling disappointed we’re losing
these games, but also having that
energy and drive to bounce back —
especially in a week like this, with
Sale in the last 16 [of the Champions
Cup]. We’re disappointed we’ve lost a
run of games, but you’ve got to
balance that and critique yourself.
The only way to get better from those
defeats is to learn, take the positives,
and bring some energy to get the
team back on a high. You’ve got to get
your head up; fix those rights.
“Winning is easy. When you’re
winning you’re doing everything
right, nothing wrong, and to everyone
outside it’s amazing. Then when
you’re losing it’s the worst thing in the
world. You’ve got to find a balance. It
only takes two or three individuals to
pull a team down, so it’s about how
we can energise each other. One can
be that energiser and lift the team.”
Energy coursed through Bristol last
season. Continuing their seemingly
inexorable hunt for trophies they
finished top of the Gallagher
Premiership and won the second-tier
Challenge Cup — their first major
continental trophy.
But today at 1pm against Sale
Sharks in the last-16 first leg, it is SOS
time — Save Our Season.
Domestically, Bristol have been a
shadow of themselves. They are four
places from the bottom of the table,
set to complete the worst season of
any who had finished first the year
before since Sale won the Premiership
in 2006 then slumped to tenth.
Off the field there are messy stories
too — talk of some disquiet, and a
player reshuffle underway after a
salary cap error meant Bristol had to
offload the likes of Dave Attwood and
Nathan Hughes to save money.
Coupled with a misfiring gameplan,
which is failing to help superstars
Semi Radradra and Charles Piutau,
an unpalatable Bristolian cocktail has
been created.
For outsiders it started with that
harrowing Premiership semi-final
defeat by Harlequins at Ashton Gate
in June. Up 24-0 in the first-half,
Bristol lost 43-36 after extra time.“It was our last game of the season
so definitely did hang over the heads
of quite a lot of us for a while,”
Randall says. “It definitely took a
while to get over.
“I truly believe we’ve learnt from
that game and it will stand us
in good stead in future
knockout rugby.”
The freshness Europe
will bring — despite
Bristol playing another
English side — has
come at the right time
for a club who have
taken only one major
win, 52-21, in this
competition against a
depleted Scarlets, since late
January. Can a cup run change
their fortunes, then?
“Why not?” Randall asks. “We
definitely believe we have the ability
to win these two rounds, get through
to the quarter-final, and we believe
we have the ability to beat every team
in the competition. That’s our
mindset — we’re trying to win this.Sale Sharks v
Bristol BearsHeineken Champions
Cup, round of 16, first leg
Today, kick-off 1pm
TV: BT Sport 316 2GS Saturday April 9 2022 | the timesSport Rugby union
ROGAN THOMPSON/FEVER PITCH FOR THE TIMES