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summer tours when Johnny Sexton was picked for Ireland’s second Test against the All Blacks, a week after he had been withdrawn with such an injury in the first match.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...
All the time that I have been investigating former players in middle age facing up to life-changing diagnoses, I have been watching the effects of early-onset Alzheimer’s on my wifeIt has been a horrible week for rugby, a fitting end to a year more harrowing and transformational for the sport than quite possibly any – 1995 and 1895 can make way now for 2020. From the salary-cap debacle at the start, through the ravages of a global virus, the more familiar ravages of an audience endlessly critical of the product, to this, an association with dementia in former players barely at middle age – what chance our grand old game surviving?From a personal point of view, it has been an...
There is always compromise, always managed space – but banning exercise in this country would be a disasterYou can take our pubs and our shopping centres. You can wall us up behind the front door with Netflix and newsagent wine. But don’t take away our glimpse of the sky, that proscribed 30 minutes of brain-soothing, body-stretching exercise.Judging by the experiences of Spain, Italy and France, this is the next stage for the UK. Quite how long we can put off a complete ban on personal exercise is open to question. But a concerted effort is required here because, with the weather this week forecast to reach as a high as 23C, this really could be a tipping point. Related: English...
Danny Rose has been open in tackling his demons and that can only be a good thing in the wider worldDanny Rose remembered getting angry. He’d suffered his first really serious injury and the team were doing well without him. “I didn’t socialise, I wasn’t sleeping, I was looking to fall out with anybody.” Gareth Southgate and the Duke of Cambridge were among the small audience listening intently as the Tottenham left-back described the signs of his depression. Related: Elite sport is gradually waking up to widespread mental health issues | Sean Ingle Related: ‘They’ve just scratched the surface’ – football tackling mental health but more can be done Continue reading...
The Olympic legend’s mental health battle is a reminder of the darkness that can descend when a sporting great’s career endsThere were no tears when Victoria Pendleton won her first Olympic gold medal. There was no great emotional climax, no comforting sense, in the aftermath, that her life was now complete. She did not even really feel like celebrating. “It’s like a big anticlimax anyway,” she confided a year later. “I mean, how could you achieve your dream? You don’t plan for the next day. In the morning it’s like it never happened, like you’re reading about it in a comic book. When you’re in that adrenaline-fuelled environment you take in so little … so it’s not easy for it...