Ex-Giants star to sue RL chiefs as he faces dementia battle aged 49
GROUP OF FORMER PLAYERS IN CONCUSSION CASE
A GROUP of former players are planning to sue the Rugby Football League for negligence over what they say was a failure to protect them from the risks of concussion during their careers.
Former Huddersfield Giants star Bobbie Goulding, Paul Highton and Jason Roach are part of a test group of 10 exprofessionals involved in the action against the governing body. Those three men have been diagnosed with earlyonset dementia and probable CTE.
CTE – chronic traumatic encephalopathy – is a progressive brain condition which is thought to be caused by repeated blows to the head.
The players allege in a letter being sent to the RFL that, given the significant risk of serious or permanent brain damage caused by concussions, the governing body “owed them, as individual professional players, a duty to take reasonable care for their safety by establishing and implementing rules in respect of the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of actual or suspected concussive and subconcussive injuries”.
The group is represented by Richard Boardman of Rylands Law, the firm which has also launched an action on behalf of ex-rugby union players against World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union.
Boardman is representing a wider group of more than 50 players, ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s, many of whom are showing symptoms associated with neurological complications.
Goulding, 49, played for 17 years as a professional, representing Great Britain, Wigan, Widnes, Leeds and St Helens. He spent a season with Giants in 1998-99, making 29 appearances and scoring 176 points.
He was diagnosed earlier this month, having battled earlier in his life with alcohol and drug addiction.
Highton, 44, played over 200 Super League games. Like Goulding, he was diagnosed earlier this month. So too was Roach, 50, a former Scotland international who played for various top clubs in England in a career spanning more than a decade.
Roach said he started to notice something was amiss in his late 30s when he would repeat himself, and also had no recollection of crashing his vehicle and then acting in a threatening manner.
He said he had become “reclusive”, adding: “I used to be sociable, outgoing, Jack the Lad, funny, (the) life and soul of the party.
“I would go out on my own, I’d be one of the lads, probably the alpha male in a bunch of alpha males. I was the alpha alpha male. I’ve now gone to not wanting to do anything, frightened of situations.”
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