Phil Vickery, the 2003 World Cup-winner, has revealed his diagnosis of probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and spoken for the first time about the brain damage he has suffered from head injuries during his career.

Vickery was named 12 months ago as a member of the class-action concussion lawsuit against World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union.

The number of players involved in that has since grown to around 400 with Mark Regan, another member of England’s 2003 squad, also named.

Speaking to The Times, Vickery stressed that he is not “angry” or “bitter” towards the sport, yet is intent on securing his own future so that people “will be there to look after me” in older age.

“I don’t think that’s unreasonable,” said the former Gloucester and London Wasps prop, who won 73 England caps and toured with the British and Irish Lions twice.

“You know the classic response: ‘You knew what you signed up to’. Well, OK. I didn’t. I don’t remember talking about getting brain damage.

“It’s not about hanging the game out, it’s just about, ‘Right, so the reality is I could possibly be, in a few years’ time, not in a very good way, and will need help and care’.

“I’d like to think whoever’s around to look after me has got some money, instead of being a burden to my family or friends.”

Vickery is integral to Unbreakable, the TNT Sports documentary on the World Cup-winning squad of 2003, and shares particularly sobering scenes with Steve Thompson. The latter is also part of the same concussion lawsuit.

Meeting up with old team-mates, Vickery explained, has been a cathartic experience.

“Last year we started talking, and it’s like, ‘F------ hell, I thought I was the only one who had those feelings, or struggled,’ and ‘I didn’t realise you felt like that’,” he said.

“It’s a double-edged sword, because you’ve got some amazing memories, and it’s bloody brilliant and fantastic, but you lock it away, because you can’t have that anymore.

“When you open the box up again, you get all those amazing, brilliant emotions, but also the sadness.”

‘Brain MOT’ for players

Meanwhile, World Rugby has moved to allay fears raised by the concussion court case by offering all former elite players a ‘brain MOT’. On Thursday, the Welsh Rugby Union in partnership with World Rugby and Welsh Rugby Players’ Association (WRPA) announced that it would be offering a free online brain health assessment to any former male or female player who played at an elite level.

Former Wales captain Ken Owens was the first player to take the test under the scheme. Previous schemes were launched in Ireland and Australia earlier this year, although this is the first to be run in partnership with a union.

World Rugby hope the scalability of the service means it can quickly be rolled out globally against a backdrop of concerns among the playing population about the effects of concussion. Several players who signed up to the class-action lawsuit against rugby union’s governing bodies did so on the basis of law firm Rylands Garth offering a ‘free’ brain scan.

World Rugby chief medical officer Eanna Falvey hopes this will offer an alternative for those players seeking peace of mind over their own concussion history.

“Because of the publicity [of the court case] you have a lot of people who are worried,” Falvey said. “This is a way to help them. We will always maintain that the health of the players is the health of the sport. Basically, we have a healthy sport when we have a healthy playing population.

“A lot of the time, the issue people are dealing with is the unknown. You read what is going on and you wonder about yourself. Everybody forgets their keys occasionally. When you are a retired player that’s something that has a much different connotation than it does for someone who hasn’t played. The overwhelming piece from any of the players who have been through [the process] is a sense of relief.

“What’s really important is that we move from ‘this could be happening to me to me?’ to ‘is this or is this not happening to me?’ We move into a scenario where we can triage a situation medically as opposed to it being done because players have no other way of knowing. They read about things. That’s why it has been a reaction to the case because it has moved players’ expectations of what being a retired player is and their worries are very different to what they would have been 10 years ago.”

The brain health assessment is an online assessment, made up of a questionnaire and a standardised cognitive test which will then be assessed by a dedicated neuropsychologist. If there are any issues then the player will be referred to their GP. It was compared by Dee Keating, World Rugby’s player welfare manager, as an “MOT for the brain”.

Other individual unions offer a dedicated brain scanning service, although Falvey says that the “bricks and mortar” approach was not sustainable in a global roll-out. “You have other unions who have created advanced brain programmes and they have looked at 200 ex-players at the cost of millions,” Falvey said. “That’s not a sustainable approach for a global sport. This is about Wales today, it was about Australia last month and it was about Ireland in June. It is about all the world. We have been incredibly proactive in this space.”

World Rugby hopes that it will be able to offer the service to current players by the end of the 2025-26 season but work remains to be done. A dedicated benevolent fund for players who are suffering neurological issues has yet to be established, although Falvey insists World Rugby has not dragged its heels over the issue.

“In a two-year timeframe we have moved from having something that is entirely done in person to being able to deliver it online,” Falvey said. “I think that’s a real positive for us. Could we have done that faster? Perhaps we could have but it is as fast as we have been able to do it. I would agree there are some players who have had to find their answers elsewhere. We would hope this is something that could help a lot of players in the future.”