Late Blues and Maori All Blacks player diagnosed with CTE

Former Blues and Maori All Blacks scrum-half Billy Guyton, who passed away in 2023, had a brain injury likely to be connected with repeated head knocks.

Guyton became the first confirmed diagnosis of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in a fully professional rugby union player.

Apart from the Blues, he also played for the Crusaders and Hurricanes in Super Rugby as well as Tasman and North Otago in New Zealand’s National Provincial Championship and was 33 years of age when he died.

Passed away last May

His brain was donated to the brain bank at the University of Auckland and his family received a report of the diagnosis of stage Two CTE after extensive testing at Auckland’s Neurological Foundation Human Brain Bank.

Guyton passed away by suspected suicide in Nelson last May after several years of what his father John referred to as “cries for help”.

“I figured out Billy had CTE a few days after he died,” John Guyton told RNZ. “My wife and I were watching a documentary on it and I said, ‘F*** me, that’s Billy. That’s what he had.’

“If I can work it out based on a documentary, what the hell were all those specialists Billy saw missing? I hope Billy’s death blows a lot of bulls**** out of the water. Rugby is so keen to pass it all off as depression that they’re happy to ignore what’s obvious.”

New Zealand Rugby issued a press statement which said it acknowledged the Guyton family for their loss and continued grief surrounding the passing of Billy.

“We share the family’s concern at his diagnosis,” it read.

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“NZR is concerned about the possibility that repeated head impacts during participation in rugby may contribute to neurodegenerative diseases in later life.”

After Guyton’s family requested for his brain to be examined, the coroner who inquired into his death directed it to be sent to Auckland to be independently examined by a pathologist.

The local pathologist discovered the existence of CTE in Guyton’s brain.

“It was noted as CTE by the New Zealand-based pathologist,” Professor Maurice Curtis of the Brain Bank told RNZ. “It was sent to an Australian pathologist for a second opinion and it was he who gave it the Stage 2 designation.”

Stage Two CTE is characterised by brain abnormalities that are broadly defined by collections of tau protein in the crevices of the brain, the sulci, mostly in the front of the brain along with an emergent spreading pattern.

Guyton died aged 28

Curtis revealed that by Stage Three it tended to spread to the hippocampus and memory centres of the brain and by Stage Four tau is evident over the periphery of the brain.

“There are a limited number of modifiable risk factors in this case, and concussions and head knocks are certainly one of them,” he added.

The only known cause of CTE is traumatic brain injury, which can be picked up from a catastrophic incident, like a car crash, or through repeated blows to the brain over several years, as in a collision sport.

The length of time in such a sport is the most powerful association with CTE, but Guyton sustained multiple concussions and took the decision to retire because of the symptoms he was experiencing in 2018 at the age of 28.

READ MORE: Billy Guyton: Shock as former Blues scrum-half dies, aged 33