Springboks coach: ‘It was life-threatening, they gave me a 50% chance to live’
Tony Brown has opened up on a rugby injury that almost took his life back in 2008.
Springboks attack coach Tony Brown has opened up on a rugby injury that almost took his life back in 2008.
The former All Blacks fly-half turned attack guru spent six weeks in a hospital in Japan after a freak injury threatened his life, with the doctors initially giving him a ‘50% chance’ of surviving.
Ruptured pancreas
The injury occurred when he was playing for Japanese club the Wild Knights against Kintetsu Liners and the playmaker started feeling uncomfortable but soldiered on and continued to play.
However, when he still felt sick after the game and developed a fever, he was rushed to the hospital where the doctors confirmed that he had ruptured his pancreas.
“I was blindsided and didn’t see it coming,” Brown told Yomiuri Shimbun?newspaper back in 2008.
He added: “The doctors said it was quite severe and they needed to operate to save my life.”
In an appearance on Behind the Ruck podcast, Brown revisited the life scare and the challenge he faced in getting himself back onto the pitch again.
“It was life-threatening, they gave me a 50% chance to live when I got to the hospital and I spent two weeks in ICU with my insides severed,” the Springboks coach said.
“I had six tubes coming out of my stomach trying to drain the bile that your pancreas produces to digest your food. The danger of a ruptured pancreas is that the bile goes through your organs and digests your organs so then that becomes life-threatening.”
Bouncing back
At the time, he was just 33 years old and despite the huge setback, he would recover and go on to play for three more years before hanging up the boots in 2011.
But it was not an easy road to recovery for a man who is usually incredibly active.
“So I spent six weeks in hospital and I walked out at 72kgs so I had lost 12kgs, so it was a tough time to get through that six weeks because I’m not a good guy to enjoy just been stuck in hospital lying down doing nothing,” he added.
“I wanted to get out, I wanted to compete and I wanted to play rugby again, so it was a tough time but as soon as I got out I came up with a plan to try and be back playing.
“My goal was to get back for the final of the Japanese competition, so I had 3 months to try and get fit again and put my weight back on and get confident enough that when I go onto the collision again I’m going to be okay.”
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Love for coaching
Following the conclusion of his playing career, Brown kickstarted his coaching career which ultimately led to him joining Rassie Erasmus’ Springboks coaching staff in 2024.
However, it was during his time in Japan where his coaching journey began as he was offered a player-coach role with the Wild Knights.
As is still the case, Japanese clubs were limited to the number of foreign players and the ex-playmaker revealed that his love for coaching blossomed with his clubmates asking for his assistance.
“Luckily enough for me back in the early 2000s in Japan there was only one or two foreigners per team, so the Japanese players always come to you for advice and they come to you to do some training together to try and help them improve their game,” he said.
“So I just really enjoyed helping the Japanese players get better and then a couple of years into my contract they asked me to be a player-coach.
“I was probably about 30 at the time so signed on as a player-coach and then my body sort of hung in there for a bit longer than they thought so I ended up being a player-coach for eight years there.
“It allowed me to learn a lot about coaching and different ways to coach and it actually probably made me a better player as well because I was trying to coach the players and I had to then deliver myself around the pitch and be accountable.”
