Concussion hits another Chief
Liam Polwart is the latest Chiefs player to be forced out of rugby with a longterm concussion.
The promising hooker last year resigned with the Super Rugby club, and his Bay of Plenty province, until the end of 2020, however his name was missing from the Chiefs’ roster for next season, when they announced it last week.
Nathan Harris, Samisoni Taukei’aho and Bradley Slater were the hookers named in the 39-man squad.
The Chiefs didn’t respond to queries about Polwart’s situation, but understands the 24-year-old’s absence is due to the ongoing effects of a head knock.
Polwart, a former
New Zealand Under20s and New Zealand Maori representative, has played
25 games for the
Chiefs since debuting in 2017, but concussions have been a constant for him in his brief Super Rugby career so far.
In fact, he missed the first dozen games of his debut year because of that reason.
Then, after establishing himself behind first-choice Harris in 2018, with
14 appearances, Polwart’s progress was stunted again this year, with a preseason head knock seeing him sidelined for the first couple of months.
He returned to the field in the loss to the Lions in Hamilton on April 19, and played a further four matches, though the last of those lasted for all of one minute, with a concussion in the loss to the Blues in Auckland on May 18.
That knock not only scratched Polwart from the rest of the Chiefs’ campaign, but it also saw him miss the entire Mitre 10 Cup season for a Bay of Plenty team which he captained in 2018.
It’s understood that after meeting Chiefs officials, Polwart made the tough call to withdraw from the game indefinitely.
Ironically, his older brother, Sean Polwart, retired from rugby in 2017 due to his own concussion suffered at a Chiefs training session in 2015.