Scotland doctor upbeat about rugby’s future as he bows out after 33 years
◆ Chief medical officer Robson believes everyone is trying to make the sport safer
Dr James Robson, Scottish Rugby’s outgoing chief medical officer, is optimistic about the future of the sport as he prepares for retirement after 33 years at the sharp end of the international game.
Saturday’s match in Dublin against Ireland was his last with Scotland and although the team couldn’t give him a winning send-off, there were no serious injuries, which has always been the good doctor’s prime concern.
In a sport based around collisions, this has not always been the case and Robson has seen rugby’s physicality grow to almost unbearable levels and had to deal with some terrible cases. He cites the 2009 Lions tour of South Africa, and in particular the second Test, as the nadir, a time when the players became too muscle-bound, too bulky. He spoke then of his wish that player welfare would become more of a priority. It has, but too late for some and rugby finds itself embroiled in legal issues.
Bound by confidentiality, Robson, 66, won’t speak about specific cases but he retains faith in the game’s guardians to continue to try to make it as safe as possible.
“From the low point of that big game in South Africa [in 2009], I do believe everybody is striving to make it safer and therefore preserve it,” he said. “We should never shy away from the discussion that is happening – about whether children should be tackling, at what age. I remember a few years ago when someone asked me if I was worried it would put people and parents off when you are talking about injuries. I said they should be more worried if we are not discussing it.
“So we have to continue to have a healthy debate. You’ve got the people who think rugby should be banned, and you’ve got people who think rugby has gone soft. There is a large swathe of us in the middle and we’ve got to find a way through.
“Do we want everyone sitting in front of the TV and playing on Playstations or X-boxes? I think physical activity and exercise is paramount to the nation’s health. Rugby is a small facet of that. We have to continue to examine the game and try to make it as safe and attractive as possible.”
It’s a noble sentiment and Robson has been a standard bearer in raising awareness over brain injuries but there remains an existential threat. Around 250 former players are involved in legal action against World Rugby, and the English and Welsh national unions. All have been diagnosed with neurological damage and they allege it was caused by rugby, and are seeking damages from the authorities, accusing them of negligence. Closer to home is the tragedy of Siobhan Cattigan, the former Scotland international who died in November 2021 at the age of 26. Her family said undetected rugby-related brain damage caused a “catastrophic decline” in her health and that she was not given the required assistance and began legal action against Scottish Rugby and World Rugby. Scottish Rugby apologised “wholeheartedly” to Cattigan’s family last year, saying it had let them down.
Robson was involved in the setting up of a pilot brain health clinic at Murrayfield in 2022 and it’s an area in which he hopes to stay involved. “We’ve not got everything right and we’ve still got a long way to go in the journey of making rugby as safe as we can,” he said. “You could argue whether we’ll ever be able to make a contact sport safe, but there’s lots of sports where injuries can occur. I am delighted the journey so far has seen great advances in care, particularly acute pitchside care. Now everyone at pitchside has to be trained to the level of paramedics attending car crashes.”
It’s a startling comparison but indicative of the scale of the collision injuries he has had to deal with. No-one who watched the Six Nations game against Wales in Cardiff in 2010 could forget how Robson and his team dealt with Thom Evans on the pitch after the Scotland wing suffered a severe neck injury which came close to leaving him paralysed or worse.
“Thom said to me, ‘James, I can’t breathe’,” explained Robson. “I said, ‘Thom, you can breathe because you are speaking to me. Anything else?’ He said, ‘I can’t feel my legs’. That is just the worse thing you can possibly hear. We had to get a young man in his prime, from nose down to face up, onto a stretcher, triply immobilised without moving his neck. The surgeon who operated on him that night said there was literally millimetres of leeway. It goes without saying that once you analyse it, it becomes more horrendous.
“It was easier at the time because we had started doing the pitch-side care courses. We were training for that very eventuality, hoping it would never happen. Fortunately for us there was an immense outcome. Thom did really well and is doing really well.”
The memories come tumbling out and Robson holds a special place in his heart for the late Doddie Weir whom he befriended in 1991 shortly after joining the SRU. Robson had the difficult job of telling Weir his Lions tour had been ended early in 1997 after he’d been targeted by the opposition in a midweek win over Mpumalanga Province. The knee injury caused him to miss the Test series. “He was such a gentle giant and would do anything for anybody,” said Robson. “For somebody who was in such a rich vein of form… it was devastating for him.”
Retirement will allow Robson to spend more time with his family. The Scotland players gave him a magnificent send-off in his last game at Murrayfield when he was raised up on the shoulders of Pierre Schoeman after the win over England. Robson hoisted the Calcutta Cup to the sky, the crowning glory after a remarkable career.
Everyone at pitchside must be trained to the level of paramedics attending car crashes