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.”
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.
In one passage, he relates calling his father in to take notes on bank account passwords and so forth that his wife would need after his death.
“It seemed too hard to fight,” he writes. “I was ready not to see my wife again, not see the boys grow up … Weighed it all up. And I still came to the conclusion that it was just too hard a battle.”
But battle he did, stunning doctors with his recovery; now the only lingering physical damage is the lost vision.
"I was in constant contact with [wife] Isabella [back in the UK with their three sons], but I don’t remember much of those conversations at all. I was preparing for the worst.”
“The doctors said the way it develops, is after three to four days it should hopefully be going in the right direction,” he says.
“If you look at the scans, the decision that I took [to stay alive] was almost at the exact time the swelling started to go down – it wasn’t that I just ‘decided’ to live, those two things combined, mentally and physically.”
Doctors were amazed at his physical recovery, though he is still working on the mental side.
He felt survivor’s guilt for a long time, and admits that one of the toughest things to deal with now is the fact that he seems 'back to normal'.
“I look the same; I sound the same. You wouldn’t know. But I know,” he writes. “Sometimes I wish I could wear a sign around my neck – ‘Stroke victim! I can’t see very well! – for all the people who get pissed off when I accidentally bump into them on the underground.”
“The catalyst for writing the book was having a story worth telling,” he tells me. “I knew nothing about stroke until it happened to me. I found telling the story quite cathartic.”
Lynagh’s three boys – the oldest is 14, the youngest eight – stayed with their mother in London where the family has lived since he played for Saracens as their father fought for his life.
“Brain injury is not easy to describe to adults, let alone kids, so we decided it was best for me to concentrate on recovery,” he says.
A frequent visitor to Hong Kong – he played in nine Sevens tournaments and comes back almost every year – Lynagh will be on punditry duties in the UK during the Rugby World Cup and says he’s “quietly confident” the current Wallabies can win the title.
Though he lifted the trophy in 1991, you know the biggest prize of his life came in that Brisbane hospital bed in 2012. Having mentally said goodbye, Lynagh is now looking forward to many decades with his sons, and their children.
“The oldest one has read the book and was asking a lot of questions, the middle one’s read bits – and the youngest just wanted to see his picture!” he adds. “It’s nice to think you can say, ‘This is what granddad used to do’, and leave something for future generations.”
Blindsided by Michael Lynagh and Mark Eglinton is out now from Harper Collins.
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