Major study launched into head injuries in amateur rugby

A ground-breaking concussion and head injury study featuring more than 700 participants from the men’s and women’s amateur game is being launched by World Rugby.

Designed to gain a better understanding of the nature and frequency of head impacts in community and age-grade rugby, the study will start next month with more than 700 male and female adult, under-18, under-15 and under13 community-level players.

World Rugby is partnering with New Zealand Rugby, the University of Otago and Prevent Biometrics, with each of the players wearing a Prevent Biometrics’ mouthguard, which has an impact-recording accuracy of more than 95 per cent. The mouthguards collect and wirelessly transmit count, load, location, direction, linear and rotational motion for each collision.

The data gathered under control conditions at the University of Otago, combined with time-coded video analysis, will provide the largest bank of comparable data undertaken in any sport worldwide.

World Rugby’s chief medical officer, Dr Eanna Falvey, said: “Player welfare continues to be our top priority.

“By continually commissioning and partnering in research, we can make evidence-based decisions that will advance our understanding of injuries in the sport and more importantly, inform the moves that we can make to reduce them.

“We have been monitoring instrumented mouthguard technology for some time, and rapid advances in the sensitivity can now make it possible to distinguish between a head impact, a jump or shouting for example.”