Sharks chief blasts head-injury rules

SALE Sharks director of rugby Steve Diamond has criticised the Head Injury Assessment (HIA) protocol after his side were forced to play scrum-half Mike Phillips at fly-half in the second half against Gloucester on Friday.

Sale did not have a regular fly-half on the bench when Dan Mugford was removed from the field by medics with a suspected concussion 56 minutes in to his side’s Aviva Premiership defeat by Gloucester.

Mugford did not return to the field, suggesting the HIA gave Sale’s medical team reason to believe he had suffered a concussion — which in some cases can lead to long-term neurodegenerative problems.

After the game Diamond criticised the HIA protocols — which allow medics up to 13 minutes to use video evidence and run through a series of checks designed to identify if players have suffered a possible brain injury.

The director of rugby said: ‘The pressure’s on the medical people under the new HIA regulations. All you need to have is a slap on the head and they have you off the field for 13 minutes now.

‘I don’t know where we are going with it.’

Sharks are being sued by their former scrum-half Cillian Willis for mismanagement of a head injury in 2013 when Diamond was in charge.

His lawsuit has been described as a potential game-changer for rugby around the world by Bernard Jackman, Willis’s former Leinster teammate whose own career ended in 2010 following a series of concussions.

Jackman, who candidly lifted the lid on his own concussion battle in his book Blue Blood, said: ‘Everyone understands now that concussion is a serious injury.

‘Cillian’s case has led to long-term side-effects and he feels he was badly advised, so a lot of doctors and clubs are going to be following what happens to see where it leaves them.’