The story so far
In March, the Herald reveals five players from the 1964 Taranaki Ranfurly Shield team, including All Blacks Neil Wolfe and Ross Brown, had either died with or were suffering from dementia.
Over the next week, a number of All Blacks and their families come forward to share their dementia/ CTE stories, including Greg Rowlands, Waka Nathan, Tony Steel, Sandy McNicol and Geoff Old.
NZ Rugby chief executive Steve Tew responds: “It is a complicated issue and even the highly skilled and trained medical professionals cannot give you a definitive answer on a whole load of really important questions.”
In June, the Herald reveals that the AUT-led, World Rugby-funded research into the health of retired rugby players had created tension, with lead researcher Patria Hume saying: “World Rugby and NZ Rugby did not give approval for the full report and all the results to be released”. NZR and WR reject the contention that findings from the study were sanitised.
NZR partners with Statistics NZ in research to try to determine whether elite rugby players from 1950-70 were more likely to suffer from dementia-related illnesses than nonrugby playing people.
August 25: A paper in Sports Medicine reveals rugby players with a history of concussion are more susceptible to “cognitive difficulties” when they retire.