The Big Interview: Olsi Krasniqi

BY ROSS HEPPENSTALL

STEVIE WARD is not the only seasoned professional rugby league player to announce his retirement from the game this year due to the effects of concussion.

Olsi Krasniqi, whose career included two spells at London Broncos and stints at Salford Red Devils and Toronto Wolfpack, officially hung up his boots last month.

The Albania-born prop, who had planned to continue playing into his mid-thirties, sustained a head knock playing for the Broncos in the opening game of the 2021 Championship season.

The effects led to him suffering with physical symptoms such as noise and light sensitivity, plus balance issues and tiredness during the day.

And so the married father of two decided to call it quits.

To walk away from the game he loves. At the age of just 29.

Krasniqi’s story has echoes of Ward, the former Leeds Rhinos captain who announced his retirement in January due to long-standing consequences of a concussion injury he sustained in the first game of the 2020 season.

Ward’s plight was the subject of a recent documentary on Sky Sports and much of what he saw resonated with Krasniqi.

“It’s a hard one when you compare someone else’s symptoms because you don’t want to take away from what they are going through,” Krasniqi told rugbyleaguehub.com Long Reads.

“You also don’t want to downplay your own story or make it sound worse.

“Stevie Ward’s story is Stevie Ward’s story and he’s the only one who can really tell it how it should be told.

“But from what I am seeing from his interviews, there are a lot of similarities with my story, for sure.

“When I watched the documentary, it was incredibly brave of Stevie to do that.

“The images of him going to sleep during the day – and the blinds having to be closed – that resonated quite a lot for me.

“I have come to the point where that’s not too much of an issue and I’m extremely grateful for it because for about five or six months that was a really hard road for me.

“The light was unbearable, but the funny thing is that you just start functioning in a normal way where people seem to think you’re okay and that nothing is really going on.

“But your own symptoms never really go.

“You just kind of learn to live with the fact that the light is going to batter you all day.

“I’m sat in my loft talking to you now and the sun is beaming right through the window and I’m okay.

“But a couple of months ago, there was no chance I could have done this.

“Issues over balance were another big thing for me.

“I think the most frustrating thing is that I was always pretty good at those things; balance and hand-eye coordination.

“I think more boys need to be aware of what a concussion looks like. We really need to understand this point.”

Krasniqi’s battle to recover from his head injury led to him suffering from depression.

But he recently became a father for the second time in two years and is feeling better within himself mentally.

The effects of the head knocks he suffered while playing rugby league still linger, however.

And he admits he cannot say with any certainty whether or not the concussions have caused lasting damage to his brain.

Krasniqi explained: “I’m not confident about permanent damage at all because there are times when the headache will be splintering.

“There are still days when I don’t want to go outside.

“But there are a lot rarer than they were five months ago and that gives me a lot of hope of getting better.

“The biggest thing was for me that I just felt incredibly alone.

“Not through retirement but through most of the concussions that I have had.

“The best way I could describe my concussions is that it’s like you’re driving along in cruise control, listening to music, and everything is great.

“Then you’re bumped into the hard shoulder and are in the dirt.

“And you’re on your own. How do I get back to driving at 70mph again?

“Who’s there to support you emotionally when your whole life has been sent off on this track?

“You can’t walk properly and it feels as if your physiological self has just been whacked off track.

“Your emotions are all over the place and I can’t tell you how many times I’d be sad one moment and then angry the next.

“Then I’d be knackered and the anxiety would set in over what the future holds.

“When am I going to get better again? I chase my son around the living room and now have to sit down after a minute. That’s the scary part.”

For Krasniqi, the key to reducing potential concussions lies in the way players train and reducing the amount of physical contact away from gameday.

He explained: “The negligence for me is how much you can actually do in training – that’s the worst part of the sport for me.

“A coach can essentially do what he wants with his team and I’ve been part of that at clubs.

“When I came through, there was nothing to stop you doing full contact every single day.

“That’s crazy and when I look back I think ‘what are we actually doing here?’

“Pre-season, you are in most days and there will be a form of contact.

“Who is regulating that? Who is regulating high tackles within that?

“I don’t know the answers, but maybe it’s the amount of time you’re allowed to do full contact.

“Or maybe have a form or referee there to regulate it.

“This sounds like we’re going a bit soft, but I don’t think you’ve seen the end of rugby players wanting to sue the authorities.

“Especially at a time when these lads are so fine-tuned and have the ability to make some really damaging contacts.

“The impacts are getting bigger, the players are getting faster, and there are more opportunities for heads to go in the wrong place.

“I don’t think rules of the game will change the fact that concussions are inevitable and will happen at some point.

“It’s like boxing – someone is going to get knocked out but I think we can regulate it better and make it safer in full contact sessions.

“But we need to have someone there and that, if something does happen to a player, he’s their responsibility and they decide it he can play on or not.

“Every player says ‘I’m fine’ and I’ve done that plenty of times – but it’s a stupid culture which needs to be bred out of the game.

“There are so many ways you can regulate contact.

“You could say ‘during pre-season, you’re only allowed 45 minutes per week and then 25 minutes during the season itself’.

“You do enough contact during games and you need to recover.”

As a rugged forward, Krasniqi grew accustomed to making the big carries up the middle.

“I did the maths once and it scared me to be honest,” he said.

“In an average game for a front-rower, I’d make 10 carries and maybe 25 to 30 tackles. You times that by 25 games in a season and that’s a hell of a lot of impact, just during games.

“When big contacts are happening in training so often, it’s time to start asking some questions.

“Players are like pieces of meat. I’ve got a lad now and I’ll do my best to keep him away from rugby.

“There is damage happening in training sessions.

“I was very lucky at London last season with Wardy (Danny Ward) and Jamie Langley, who supported me through my concussion.

“But I felt that pressure at other clubs. You think ‘I need to keep my spot, otherwise people will look down on me’.

“When I look back, I see that some of the decisions I made were preposterous just because I didn’t want to upset the coach.”

Krasniqi is a thoughtful and engaging interviewee and certainly not your average rugby league player.

Born in Albania, his family moved to London in search of a better life when he was a child. Raised in Feltham, Krasniqi joined London when they were known as Harlequins RL and made his Super League debut as a 17-year-old in 2010.

Brian McDemottt’s side beat Crusaders 50-22 and a young Krasniqi came off the bench to score a try in a Harlequins outfit featuring the likes of Luke Dorn, Luke Gale, Tony Clubb and Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook.

Krasniqi then had a spell playing for Australian club Wynnum Manly after leaving the Broncos at the end of the 2014 season.

He enjoyed his experience down under and then returned to Super League to play for Salford in 2015, helping them to famously survive relegation following year when a dramatic drop-goal from Gareth O’Brien saw them beat Hull KR in the Million Pound Game.

“We’d had a little bit of shit from some of the Hull KR lads during the game,” Krasniqi remembers with a smile.

“They were saying ‘what are you lads going to do next year for work?’

“But we just stayed focused and the effort to come back and win was amazing and we were all carrying knocks at the time.

“I look back and think ‘wow, that was crazy’.

“The stakes were so, so high and that Jack Welsby try in the Grand Final will forever be one of the most dramatic tries that rugby league has seen.

“But the consequences of St Helens not winning the title were nowhere near as significant as that Million Pound Game.

“We would have gone part-time and you’re playing under Marwan, so who knows what part-time looks like even if there was a part-time?

“We celebrated at the final hooter but then came the realisation that another set of lads were facing an uncertain future. Three minutes earlier, before the late drama, we were in that same position.

“Hull KR were very lucky that their owner stuck by them and they came back up the following year.”

Krasniqi enjoyed his time at Salford during the at times chaotic ownership of Marwan Koukash.

“London is the club closes to my heart, but I absolutely loved playing for Salford,” he said.

“The fans there were great and I was at Salford through that transition period where the club went on to compete in two major finals.

“Even though I wasn’t there for that, I was part of the building blocks and it was a great time in my career.”

But uncertainty reigned off the field at times during Koukash’s tenure.

“Some crazy things happened that just shouldn’t happen in professional sport,” said Krasniqi.

“It’s not spoken about enough and the amount of stress that we were under as a group when it came to things like getting paid was crazy.

“Some players are earning an incredible amount of money and to then maybe not get paid or be paid late was very detrimental to what the team could have potentially achieved.

“That kind of instability is terrible for every team who have been through it.

“I could have earned the money I’ve made in rugby league working as a carpenter, which is a trade I have.

“I love the game of rugby league, but was playing all these years really worth it?

“Steve Thompson, the rugby union World Cup winner, said ‘I’d take back every single game I played to be healthy again’, which says everything.

“We also need to look at the structure of the game. If Featherstone get promoted this season, will they just become another Leigh and come straight back down, as opposed to being given time to build and go full-time?”

Krasniqi played under McDermott again at Toronto Wolfpack and was again part of a club who failed to pay their players on time.

“I was at London Broncos when we were about to go into administration, then I had it at Salford and again at Toronto,” said Krasniqi.

“It’s a very strange concept to deal with because you don’t expect to not get paid and I’ll never understand how these things are allowed to happen.

“It’s a personal opinion, but it seems like any owner who wants to take over a club can come into rugby league without any real regulation around it.

“Someone can counter me on that and say ‘we do X, Y and Z’ but I’ve not seen any evidence of that.

“There are too many owners who are threatening to pull out and it’s too common for it to be an anomaly. Below the top six clubs in Super League, things are very choppy in the game.”

Krasniqi believes Toronto’s financial problems contributed to their failure against London in the 2018 Million Pound Game.

“I know from experience that if you’re not firing from the top down at a club then you have no chance,” he said.

“Toronto in 2018, we smoked absolutely everybody, but there were troubles from above and we failed in the Million Pound Game.

“London beat us and all those backroom things have a huge impact that a lot of the fans and the media don’t always see.

“There is always something going on behind the scenes. When we got to the Million Pound Game, there was too much going on in our camp and we just weren’t firing.

“If you speak to all the others players and coaching staff, I’m sure they would say the same.

“At Toronto we’d have a free bar after the game, yet we couldn’t get paid on time! It was nuts.”

Krasniqi left the Wolfpack midway through the 2019 season to rejoin the Broncos but they were relegated in heartbreaking fashion at the end of that season.

They recently announced they were going part-time and Krasniqi fears they will struggle to compete in the Championship this coming season.

He said: “I just don’t see how they can be successful as a part-time team, especially down here.

“Being a part-time up north, and the logistics of it, are a lot easier. You can live in Bradford and still get to Leigh on a Thursday night.

“But you can’t do that down here. You have to relocate and that’s a problem in itself.

“I just can’t see how they will get past seventh or eighth.

“I’ve still got good friends there and I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but I just don’t see how they’re going to do it and I’ve had that conversation with them as well.

“Unless they invest pretty heavily into that academy, then I don’t think they’ve got many years left.

“They need to put a big part of their budget towards bringing in new talent.

“The talent pool is huge down there, it’s absolutely massive, but if they don’t invest in that academy, then they have got no chance.

“I’d love to see them make me eat my words, though.”

Krasniqi is keen to put his experiences to good use and help pass on his knowledge to the next generation.

He will be involved in coaching Hemel Stags next season and has also coached at St Mary’s College in Twickenham.

“That’s been fun for me and a good way of sticking around the sport, but I need to work because I’ve got a young son who is 17 months and a baby daughter born this month,” he added.

“It’s been very difficult coming away from the sport because you’re faced with this realisation ‘what’s my identity now?’

“What do I call myself? Only a couple of months ago I was a professional athlete and you live and breathe it.

“Every decision you make is geared towards making you a better player.

“But now it’s not the same and the camaraderie with your mates and support network is no longer there.

“That mental impact is massive and it’s something I want to help lads out with and maybe teach the younger fellas about how best to deal with when this time comes for them.

“Who should be looking after these boys now they’re done?

“It’s a hell of a lot of pressure for a charity like Rugby League Cares to look after all these lads who are retiring or are in the sport and maybe having issues.

“I feel like the clubs think ‘right, you’re done now, you can head over to Rugby League Cares and they’ll look after you’.

“But I’m not sure if we’re going down the right track with that.

“I’m doing a masters in sports business and I’m a qualified carpenter as well, which is something I enjoy doing, but I’d like a bit more of a profile to discuss the issues surrounding the game.

“There are a lot of things I want to talk about and people probably aren’t ready to hear some of them.

“It’s a bit frustrating because the next generation is coming through and some of them will be oblivious to some of the things that happen within the sport and how to deal with that.

“A lot of lads have finished playing the game and have so many stories and anecdotes to pass on.

“But we’re just not seeing enough of them. What happens is we leave the sport and we’re not financially stable.

“Ninety-five percent of rugby league players are not earning much money and we come away from the sport pretty badly.

“Your finances are never good and your mental state isn’t great.

“Who’s there to pick up the pieces? We’re leaving too much to RL Cares in my opinion.

“I’d like my voice to be heard, especially around concussions.”