Much-vaunted policy of sending players off for head contact has resulted in plenty of bans but little meaningful change This weekend Sam Skinner should be lacing his boots to play for Exeter in a Premiership final. But in the last round of the regular season, he bent his 6ft 5in frame to tackle a 5ft 7in scrum‑half. He caught him in the head and thus became the latest player to be shown a red card. Skinner misses the climax of the season because of the mandatory ban. And he can forget about any call-ups to play for the Lions or Scotland this summer, too. It is a rank injustice, at which far too many are prepared to shrug their shoulders...
Important decisions that set standard for diagnosis, treatment and return-to-play protocols are taken by a select groupLate in October 2016, Dr Richard Sylvester arrived at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Berlin for the first day of the fifth International Conference on Concussion in Sport. Sylvester is a consultant neurologist at the UK’s Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health, and has worked as a concussion adviser for both the Football Association and World Rugby, but this was the first concussion conference he had attended.“And when I came to it I felt I didn’t understand what on earth was going on. I was like: ‘Am I missing something?’” he says. “Because this is not the approach I would have taken, you know? I...
The inquiry into concussion feels woefully small and underresourced given what we now know about the dangersOn 11 November 2002, the South Staffordshire coroner Andrew Haigh recorded a verdict of “death by industrial disease” in the case of the former England striker Jeff Astle who had died, aged 59, after years suffering with dementia. At that point there was already 30-odd years’ worth of anecdotal evidence that heading the ball caused brain trauma. The Astle verdict meant there was now an official recognition of a link. The Guardian called it a “landmark verdict”. An official at the Professional Footballers’ Association reassured the players, and public, that the PFA and the FA had “begun joint research” into how heading a football...
Burnley’s captain on being concussed, his recent injury and why he backs restrictions on children heading the ball Without my desire to stick my head in places it would rather not be, I would not have a career. I happily throw mine in the way of shots and crosses in the hope of securing an extra Premier League point, but I do wonder at what cost.I am in my 13th season as a professional footballer, not to mention the years of playing Sunday league and in the Manchester City academy, so I hate to think how many headers I have won or stray arms to the face I have had. The latest was at Selhurst Park a couple of weeks...
Australian Rules Football is proposing a trust for players suffering brain trauma and rugby could learn from this A fortnight or so ago I had an email conversation with a man who used to work as a development officer for the Rugby Football Union. We were talking about the opening round of the Six Nations, about concussion, chronic traumatic encephalopathy and what he called the “cognitive dissonance” involved in enjoying the physicality of the game while also recognising the damage it can do to the players. And then we got around to an interview I’d just done with Peter Robinson, whose boy, Ben, died of second impact syndrome while he was playing a school game in Northern Ireland in 2011....