CTE: Why New Zealand’s leading expert never wants to see contact sport banned

Dr Helen Murray, a neuroscientist at Auckland University's Centre for Brain Research. Photo / Michael Craig

Even as sport continues to come to terms with the impact of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), one of New Zealand’s leading experts never wants to see a world where sport can’t exist.

CTE is a neurological condition linked to repeated head trauma, that sees a patient’s brain deteriorate over time. Symptoms include memory deficits, mood changes, and movement issues among others.

This year, former Māori All Blacks and Blues halfback Billy Guyton was found to have CTE after his death in 2023. In early May, it was revealed that an unnamed former Kiwis rugby league representative was New Zealand’s first international sportsperson to have died with the condition.

But for Dr Helen Murray, one of Aotearoa’s leading experts in neuroscience focussing on CTE, removing risk by taking sport off the table altogether, is the wrong option.

Dr Murray herself is a keen sportswoman, as a former member of the Ice Fernz, New Zealand’s women’s ice hockey team.

“You’ve got to maintain perspective,” she told the Herald. “Not everyone who plays a contact spot is going to develop a neurodegenerative condition.

“In fact, the vast majority won’t. Part of the research is trying to figure out why some people do and some people don’t.

“We need to be careful. Diagnosis of dementia or cognitive decline is a life-changing thing, for the person, for their family. We don’t want to get it wrong. That weighs on me a lot.

“We don’t want to incite fear. Sport has so many positive benefits to our lives. I don’t think we should forget that.

“As someone who plays a contact sport, and loves my contact sport, I’d never tell someone that they shouldn’t do something they’re passionate about.

“We just have to look really honestly at the sports we play and ask where there is risk that doesn’t need to be there.

“I’m not anti-sport at all. There’s risk in everything we do in life, but there is stuff we can do to make it as safe as we can.”

Instead, Dr Murray advises minimising risk through later participation in high-contact sport, as a means of reducing the timespan players are exposed to the risk of head injuries.

Alex Powell is an Online Sports Editor for the NZ Herald. He has been a sports journalist since 2016, and previously worked for both Newshub and 1News.