Opinion | ‘Things were dark and grim’ – how rugby legend Michael Lynagh fought back from death after suffering stroke at age 48

"Things were dark and grim,” says Australian rugby great Michael Lynagh, who’s sitting in the passenger seat of a car in London telling me about the time he decided he was ready to die. He can’t drive after losing the left side of his vision in the stroke that very nearly killed him aged 48.

He recalls his thought process in that hospital bed: “‘My family will move on without me, I thought' … but I decided to fight – get on with living.”

Lynagh, who won 72 caps and the 1991 Rugby World Cup with the Wallabies, was with friends in Brisbane when a mouthful of beer went down the wrong way, prompting a coughing fit, a crippling headache, and the sudden realisation that something was very wrong indeed.

The resulting battle to stay alive after a vertebral artery split and caused swelling in his cerebellum, pushing on the brain stem, is recalled in gripping detail by Lynagh in his new book, Blindsided.

The sections on his playing career – mental tips from his psychologist father, strangling anxiety over kicking that he managed to overcome to retire as the game’s then top point-scorer, the transition to professionalism, etc – are interesting enough in traditional sports bio fashion, but the second half on his ordeal and recovery is truly gripping.

Lynagh remained remarkably lucid throughout – albeit in tremendous pain – as doctors opted against surgery, instead dehydrating him over several days to try to reduce the swelling on his brain.