Has rugby really got its head around this?
The subject of concussion and possible long term brain damage remains a burning issue in the game and the forthcoming publication of Steve Thompson’s book Unforgettable will again spark further debate and concern.
It’s an important topic but other than whole heartedly agreeing that rugby needs to urgently cut out unnecessary head contact I’m struggling to find a well-formed opinion on the way forward.
Quickly reviewing the three knocks to the head I copped many years ago, one was collateral damage tackling an opponent simultaneously as a colleague, Mike Burles, whose nut was granite like; the second was getting my head position wrong by about three inches and making contact with the hip of Mick Burke, the future GB Rugby League player; and the last one was a brilliant chop tackle which decked me and saw my head smack against a hard September ground. Stars and lighting flashes after all three.
That last one was the worst one with that split second sensation of your life going before you which I’ve experienced only once before or since – on the Tour de France when an oncoming car was trying to overtake a truck on the road from Bayonne to Bordeaux and somehow missed us by an inch.
None of those head knocks could be prevented and that’s one of rugby’s inherent problems. There are going to be big, random and legal collisions that rattle your teeth and there are going to be entirely innocent whiplash injuries. It’s almost the private unspoken contract you make with yourself when deciding that rugby is your game.
The chances of head injury are still pretty small, but they exist. For me rugby is still safer than any equestrian sport you care to name, any motorsport, rock climbing, mountaineering, skiing, big wave surfing, sky-diving, cycling, boxing, some martial arts and possibly even the likes of lacrosse, hockey and GAA sports.
Accepting that rugby should continue as a sport recognisable as rugby, the entire focus must therefore be on avoidable head/brain injuries, those that come from illegal play or bad practice.
The drive to lower the tackle height makes sense, it won’t stop those random incidents I’ve listed above but it will surely considerably reduce the sheer volume of head injuries. It’s not an overnight fix, it might take a decade of good coaching, because the current crop of top players still have it in their DNA to go higher and to target the ball and to prevent the off-load.
In the meantime we are enduring a messy interim period. Many players are getting red carded for what we deep down don’t really view as high tackles or deliberate shots at the head. Some seem to be simply standing their ground. And in real time an outwardly legal and well intentioned challenge can be made to look something much worse by a fractional change of direction or height by the ball carrier. And of course referees’ different interpretations of the laws adds further confusion. Many refs remain guilty of allowing too much dangerous and clearly illegal play at the breakdown which is also upping collisions to the head. These reckless Exocet, often off the feet, clear-outs are plain ridiculous. Those receiving the incoming fire are often nowhere near the ball and it’s either the head, neck or outer limbs that get damaged and maimed. Allowing old style rucking is one solution, simply applying the existing laws is another.
If I was a teenager again considering which sport to play this is what might deter me from playing rugby. This is stuff that can be eradicated.
Less contact in training is indicated but frankly that’s common sense and nothing new. England under Clive Woodward had only one quick-fire, seven-eightminute full contact defence session a week. During his seven years in charge I’m struggling to think of an England injury in training.
Axial loading is a current buzzword or phrase which basically means putting too much pressure through a prop or hookers upper neck vertebrae – C1 through to C6 – that can cause nasty neurological symptoms in old age if damaged when young.
Some matches include only six or seven scrums but the temptation to double or treble that workload in training remains and needs to be monitored. You can wear mouth guards these days that record the load going through your neck and as that science develops coaches will learn what a reasonable weekly workload looks like. But of course you must practice to some degree, an eight-man pack that can’t scrummage properly is a catastrophic accident waiting to happen.
Meanwhile another personal concern is these modern day concussion protocols. Twenty years ago it was a straight three weeks off for anybody who was either knocked out or suffered a concussion but then somehow it became accepted that you can be back the following week if you pass certain criteria. That seems an inexact science to me and there are always pressures for big names to play. Better safe than sorry at all times surely?
Another problem, and I speak from bitter personal experience in recent years in another context, is that you can rarely get two neurologists to agree what day of the week it is, let alone what a particular MRI scan or set of symptoms is telling you. They are like art connoisseurs pondering the same picture coming to entirely different assessments of its merits. The nuances and complexities of what they see are infinite and this is important going forward.
I remember speaking with Dr Jamie Roberts last year and he was not optimistic about the chances of players seeking retrospective compensation simply because it is so difficult to directly link mental impairment and dementia to a specific injury or series of injuries even though common sense, of course, tells us that multiple whacks to the head must exacerbate the situation.
Again the nuances and complexities come into play. None of the friends I know who have suffered from early onset dementia and/or neural damage played contact sports in any shape or form. It is possibly a similar case with you.
At least the issues – and the suffering of those involved – are out there now and all power to Thompson, Kyran Bracken, Alix Popham and others but I’m not sure, even now, if rugby has really got its head around the fundamental nature of this debate.