Dylan Cleaver Author

Carl Joseph Hayman is a retired New Zealand rugby player who played at tighthead prop, making 45 appearances for the All Blacks. Hayman has previously played for the Otago Highlanders in Super Rugby, Newcastle Falcons in the English Premiership, and French side Toulon, where he captained the side to victory in the 2015 European championship. Hayman announced his retirement from professional rugby in January 2015, aged 35, having played 445 games of professional rugby. Post retirement Hayman has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia and probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy. He lives in Taranaki, New Zealand. Dylan Cleaver has spent the better part of three decades covering sport. Now the publisher of sports newsletter The Bounce, Cleaver has worked for mastheads such as the New Zealand Herald, Herald on Sunday, Sunday Star-Times, Sunday News and Irish Examiner, as well as contributing regularly to websites The Spinoff, Cricket Monthly and CODE Sports. Cleaver has won close to 40 national journalism awards, including Best Investigation at the Canon Media Awards in 2015 for his work on match-fixing allegations involving former New Zealand cricketers. He has been named Sports Journalist of the Year on multiple occasions, including 2022, where he was recognised in part for a feature article on Carl Hayman, and in 2017 for his groundbreaking work linking the high rates of dementia in former rugby players with head injuries suffered in their playing days. Cleaver was raised in New Plymouth and now lives on the North Shore of Auckland with his wife Michelle and two teenage children Liam and Libby.