Wheelchair for life unacceptable — player

Press, 19 May 1984, Page 1

Wheelchair for life unacceptable — player

Life in a wheelchair is not something that Mr Jim Algie says he will ever be able to accept.

Nor does he believe that rugby, the game which has left him paralysed from the neck down, can ever be made totally safe. The Masterton man, aged 24, was the first player injured in a spate of spinal injuries that drew national publicity this season. Last night was the first he has been allowed to spend with his wife and twin daughters in a self-care flat at the Christchurch Spinal Injuries Unit.

“It is just to keep my morale up,” Mr Algie said yesterday. He broke his neck in a maul during a preseason game at Masterton on March 18.

“I do not feel anti-rugby or anything like that, but I did not even know a thing like this could happen,” he said.

Every rugby player should know the possible danger before he went on to the field, and Mr Algie said coaches should make more effort to teach teams the correct scrum techniques. “If they can fix the way they go down in the scrum it will help but it won’t prevent the whole thing of spinal injuries,” Mr Algie said.

The Masterton Marist player’s own accident happened while trying to stop a try. The tackle developed into a maul on the goal line

as other players joined in. “I just went over head first and instinctively, instead of flattening my nose on the ground, put my head under.

“I just heard clicks in my neck and couldn’t move,” he said.

Ironically, he started playing rugby as part of a keep-fit campaign after giving up cigarettes for several months.

Now in a wheelchair and facing another two months in hospital, Mr Algie said he was learning to live with his paralysis. “But you never really give up hope of trying to get out of the wheelchair and you never accept the fact that you are in one,” he said.

The extent of his disability would not be known for two years and Mr Algie said he had feeling in his limbs, and could move his left leg and left hand.

There was also the possibility that he would get a new job at the freezing works where he was employed before the accident. Mr Algie said he probably still would have played rugby knowing the risk but his wife, Donna, bad the last word yesterday. If she had known the possible chance of injury, she would have made sure her husband never took to the playing field.

“It is a long hard road and I’m just wondering when it is going to end,” Mrs Algie said.