Changing the game on concussion in rugby
Rugby has dealt with player welfare crises before and it can again.
Concussion is now rugby’s Nightmare Freddy, a potential disaster for the sport. Finding a long-term fix is essential. It’s also possible.
This is not the first player welfare crisis for rugby. Officials at world level were desperately slow to address a terrible injury toll in the 1970s from broken necks in scrums.
But, thankfully, the sport eventually came to its collective senses, largely due to the efforts of a 1960 All Black, Dr Hugh Burry.
Burry was no tinfoil hat-wearing, vapour-trail nut job when, in the late ‘60s, he urgently warned the International Rugby Board of the appalling damage being caused by poor scrummaging techniques.
At the time, he was a registrar at Guy’s Hospital in London and a consultant physician to the Sports Council of Britain but the IRB basically treated his ideas with contempt.
He fought establishment fire with fire, publishing a paper on neck injuries in the British Medical Journal, which finally drove the IRB to law changes which, thank God, have largely eliminated what had become a shameful scourge from the game.
(In New Zealand some young lives were lost, and some were ruined.
‘‘I’d kill myself,’’ a player who had broken his neck in a scrum once told me at a Waikato rugby club, ‘‘but I can’t move my arms and legs.’’)
Once the will to change and improve the scrum situation was embraced, the drop in the number of injuries was extraordinary.
Concussion is a more insidious issue, but here are some of the ways the problem can be addressed.
Publicity: There’s already some sensible, extensive measures being taken by rugby here, which, if parents are going to continue to support their kids playing rugby, cannot be publicised too much.
At a professional level an independent doctor sits on the sideline with a laptop, ready to rewind and study any moment that involves concussion, with the power to order a player from the field for an examination.
In community rugby, there’s a blue card system, trialled in Northland in 2014, which is now used nationwide.
If a referee suspects a player has been concussed he or she is given a blue card, and automatically stood down for three weeks. The player can’t play again until there’s been a medical assessment.
Hammering in new attitudes: Playing on after concussion used to be not so much a matter of pride, as completely normal behaviour.
Today the message is certainly getting through at the professional level but rugby leaders must continue to emphasise to the amateurs that playing on after being dazed, or knocked out, isn’t brave, it’s stupid. And an official who allows a concussed player to keep going is committing a despicable, basically criminal, act.
Keep working at the laws: Cracking down on head high tackles is a good start but it’d be na¨ıve to think making all tackles around the legs will completely stop concussions. For a start knees can be very unforgiving to a head if a low tackle is slightly mistimed.
And far from all concussions occur in tackles. Last week in Suva, three men were ruled out with concussion during the Crusaders-Chiefs game. One wasn’t hurt in a tackle at all, and another wasn’t hit high.
The breakdown has developed into a dangerous zone. Referees now allow ‘‘cleaning out’’, which, by the letter of the law is illegal.
Basically players can go off their feet to move an opposing player to get at the ball and not be penalised.
Some sort of engagement with the hand before joining a breakdown, for example, might be a way to stop the shuddering impact of a 120kg player launching himself into a pile-up.
More information: There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that old rugby players are more likely to suffer from dementia and other mental health issues than the general population.
So far the only scientific paper on the effect of concussion in rugby was one commissioned by New Zealand Rugby, and financed by World Rugby (the former IRB), which saw a team from Auckland University of Technology check out 366 retired athletes, divided into three groups, former professional rugby players, former amateur players, and men from non-contact sports.
On its release in 2015, there was almost instant controversy, with claims and counter-claims about whether there were attempts to whitewash some elements of the report, especially the finding that concussions could impair cognitive functions (basically the ability of the mind to process knowledge and make decisions).
Nevertheless the leader of the AUT study, Professor Patria Hume, is now involved in a global rugby health study, while New Zealand Rugby is working with Statistics New Zealand to check rates of dementia in top level players from 1950 to 1970.
If a definitive link is found between rugby concussions and dementia it will sadly be too late for men from past eras.
But getting more, and better, information could help save today’s players from a similar fate.