FORCED TO RETIRE AT 28. NOW I FEAR DEMENTIA
Adam Hughes is youngest player to join legal action after two major brain traumas
RUGBY bosses are still burying their heads in the sand over the sport’s links to degenerative brain injuries, according to the youngest former player to join the marquee legal action against governing bodies.
Adam Hughes, who retired two years ago at 28 after a succession of concussions, has had two major trauma scars on his brain. He is one of six new players who are supporting legal action against World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and Welsh Rugby Union. Yesterday the legal team behind the case sent a letter of claim to those bodies.
While Welshman Hughes does not have early- onset dementia, he has been warned he might be on the same path as the trio in their 40s who have already gone public — Steve Thompson, Alix Popham and Michael Lipman.
The former centre heard RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney say last week that there was no proven link between concussion and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head which was found in 110 of 111 American football players in a 2017 post-mortem study. He was frustrated.
‘With attitudes like, “It’s not 100 per cent”, that leads to situations where the worst- case scenario has to happen before something changes,’ Hughes, who played for Wales Under 20s, Exeter Chiefs and Dragons, tells Sportsmail.
‘It’s better not to delay, face the facts, listen to stories of these players and take action to put the game in a better place rather than waiting until the worst happens, then making changes.’
Hughes’s problems started at the Dragons as a teenager. With each blow, he took longer to recover. The worst one came when playing the LV Cup final for Exeter at Franklin’s Gardens against Maro Itoje’s Saracens in 2015.
‘I took a blow and I’ve no recollection of the day whatsoever,’ he says. ‘I remember feeling like I’d opened my eyes in the stand — I said, “Why am I here and not on the pitch?”
‘I asked Rob Baxter to explain what happened the week after. He said I came into the changing room at half-time, broke down and there was no way he’d put me back on the pitch. To not remember things like that is scary.’ He went back to the Dragons that year, playing a full campaign. But in the 2016 pre- season he was knocked out again when tackling Cardiff Blues’ Josh Navidi. ‘That took six or seven months to get over,’ he explains. ‘You lose huge chunks of your days. You can’t continue playing when it gets like that. ‘I came back for a handful of games, took one knock against Ulster at Ravenhill — not even a big hit, just a run-of-the-mill tackle. I left the pitch knowing I’d never step back on it.’ While four of the new claimants want to remain anonymous, Hughes and 44-year- old Neil Spence, who played for Leicester, Gloucester and England Under 21s and has been diagnosed with early- onset dementia, spoke up. Hughes, now a referee and financial adviser, does not want rugby to suffer but is concerned the sport did not act early enough to save players from their fate. ‘If it is found they knew a lot more than they let on, then I have every right to feel let down by people put in positions of power,’ he adds. ‘Did people at the very top have the knowledge to assist us players, physios and coaches on the “shop floor” to stop those sub-concussions? ‘When the NFL was going through its huge case, there was evidence that concussion causes huge issues, so why did it take years for proper, realistic guidelines to come in? It was the days when, if you knew where you were playing and what the score was, you could keep playing. We’re only talking 10 years ago. It’s a long time coming, this. We want it to have a positive impact with changes and better guidelines to come.’ Hughes wants a reduction in the number of substitutes allowed — stopping the ‘Bomb Squad’ tactic used by World Cup-winning South Africa last year. ‘Bringing on seven brutes half-way through a game is asking for trouble,’ says Hughes, who also wants the head injury assessment — a mandatory 12-minute test for concussion which was fully rolled out in 2015 — to be improved. ‘If you get smacked on the head, why does answering a few questions on the side mean you should be able to go back on?’ he says. ‘You can see from us players that when you get hit, damage is done and damage stays. I have to hope the decision to retire at 28 is in my favour. As the guinea-pigs of this, we are yet to see.’
BATH'S European Cup game at La Rochelle tomorrow is off as 12 of their players are isolating having played the Scarlets last weekend, who revealed they have a positive Covid case. Organisers must now decide how points will be allocated as the game will not be replayed. ALUN WYN JONES may miss the start of the Six Nations in February after Ospreys boss Toby Booth revealed the Wales captain will be out for ‘double figure weeks’ after injuring his knee in the Autumn Nations Cup against Italy.