IT WAS SEEN AS ONE OF THOSE THINGS YOU COULD SHAKE OFF

I HAVE so much sympathy for Steve Thompson, Alix Popham and Michael Lipman, and hope they get the right support from loving friends, family and medical professionals to see them through it.

All of them are from my era. It seems very young for them. I know Steve well because I roomed with him for many years, so I am incredibly saddened to hear about his diagnosis.

It’s difficult to know about myself. I have a shady memory sometimes, but don’t know if that is down to being concussed or just because I am getting older. My dad has dementia, and Alzheimer’s, and was diagnosed with early-onset when he was in his mid-to-late 60s. His brother is the same.

Having heard about the three lads yesterday, knowing what I do about how dementia has an impact on a family, it is a really sad situation. Personally, I am probably more worried about the genetic possibilities of inheriting that than necessarily the career I had. I would never look back and change things — I felt I was really well catered for.

The era Steve, Michael, Alix and I played in had a vastly different approach to concussion. There was a lazy attitude towards it because it was seen as one of those things you could shake off like a boxer did. That was the norm I grew up in. I felt the medical teams had my best interests at heart, though. If I got knocked out, they were trying to drag me off or wanted me to be looked at. It was me who wanted to stay on. Having seen what happened in the NFL with their legal action, it felt fairly inevitable this would come in rugby and other contact sports.

In the NFL they are now allowed only one full-contact, padded session a week. When I played at Leicester Tigers, pretty much every session was a contact session. We prided ourselves on that and I enjoyed it, quite frankly. But if we can learn from the NFL and reduce the amount of contact in training, that might help. When these conversations started in rugby around 2013, they highlighted areas that needed to change. Since then there have been dramatic alterations made, and more will come that will benefit the current generation and future ones. The game is vastly safer now, but it could benefit from collaborating with other sports on this, sharing information, which I am sure will follow. I still want my two boys to play rugby. They are 10 and 12 and the contact sessions they do are few and far between. Rugby is a fantastic sport which they adore.

If it can do better, and more players can be supported, then that is great.

■ Lewis Moody was talking to Will Kelleher