We know from American football that a storm is heading rugby’s way. The governing bodies must act now As the arguments rage about how best to recognise and treat brain injuries in rugby, clouds are gathering in the distance. There was fury during the summer tours when Johnny Sexton was picked for Ireland’s second Test against the All Blacks, a week after he had been withdrawn with such an injury in the first match. Meanwhile, England adopted a more conservative approach, withdrawing Tom Curry, Sam Underhill and Maro Itoje from their tour of Australia. Still those clouds gather. The appropriate treatment in the here and now of players with manifest brain injuries is non-negotiable, but it does not begin to...
Governing body’s posturing over the cause of early onset dementia among ex-players is extraordinarily insensitive So it’s not the brain injuries after all. Those rugby players diagnosed with dementia in their early 40s, steadily growing in number, must be comforted to learn that the repetitive brain trauma they suffered in their playing careers is but one of 12 modifiable risk factors that might have contributed to their conditions.This is the latest angle World Rugby has come up with, as the posturing continues in advance of impending lawsuits. Here we are, nearly a year since rugby union was rocked by the news that eight of its former players were suing the sport after their diagnoses of dementia, with scores more of...
New research points to small, repetitive blows damaging rugby players’ brains, but boxing established this decades agoThey hanged Del Fontaine at Wandsworth prison early on Tuesday 29 October 1935, three months and 19 days after he shot his girlfriend Hilda Meek having overheard her arranging a date on the phone and convinced himself she was seeing another man. Protesters picketed the prison the day they killed him, one told the papers that “they’re hanging an insane man”. Fontaine was a boxer, and had been a good one, twice the middleweight champion of Canada, but that was behind him. He had lost 11 fights in the last year, in the last he was knocked down four times in the first round.When...
New research points to small, repetitive blows damaging rugby players’ brains, but boxing established this decades agoThey hanged Del Fontaine at Wandsworth prison early on Tuesday 29 October 1935, three months and 19 days after he shot his girlfriend Hilda Meek having overheard her arranging a date on the phone and convinced himself she was seeing another man. Protesters picketed the prison the day they killed him, one told the papers that “they’re hanging an insane man”. Fontaine was a boxer, and had been a good one, twice the middleweight champion of Canada, but that was behind him. He had lost 11 fights in the last year, in the last he was knocked down four times in the first round.When...
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...