Why are our children’s lives still put at risk?

Peter Robinson who has campaigned for improved safety after his son died in 2011

PETER ROBINSON’S son Ben was just 14 when he died after he was concussed during a rugby match but allowed to play on despite clear signs of head trauma. Ben’s was the first confirmed case in the UK of ‘Second Impact Syndrome’.

I HEAR people say the game has gone soft when we keep talking about concussion. It hasn’t gone soft. It’s just got wise.

Concussion is an easy word to say but when I was at Ben’s bedside not once did the doctors mention it. All they referred to was a traumatic brain injury.

That is what concussion is. When you hear that, you sit up and listen. It is just common sense.

There has been a culture in sport, especially in rugby, of kids going to ground and being told to get up and play. That’s where the culture needs to change when talking about concussion.

It was only at the inquest that we discovered the lack of awareness among coaches and officials. It will always stick in my mind when we heard the coroner’s summing up at Ben’s inquest. She said that Ben had passed all the concussion tests.

But there is no concussion test in amateur rugby like there is in the professional game. There never has been. And there should not be. As soon as you see they might be concussed, that is enough to get them off the field.

We see referees and coaches ask children questions, known as Maddocks questions — What’s the score? Who are you playing? — and wrongly assume that if they are answered correctly they are fit to continue.

That is just not right. Those questions should be to rule them out, not to rule them back in to play. But not enough people know this. That has to change. We keep hearing about lessons have been learned from Ben’s death but I still see children every week being asked these questions and it is putting kids’ lives at risk.

My younger son, Gregor, is now the same age as Ben. Last year, he was playing in an under-13s football tournament in Yorkshire. His team, Lasswade Thistle, were the first to wear the concussion logo on their shirts.

During the match, he clashed heads with an opponent and both fell to the ground. Immediately, Gregor was like Bambi on ice.

They took him straight off but as they were walking off the pitch, the referee said: ‘If he’s OK in a few minutes he can come back on.’ We all said: ‘No way!’. I advised the referee to get clued up on concussion.

I wasn’t the most popular dad in the heat of the moment but at least Gregor gets to come home.

At times it has felt like two steps forward and one back. We could be a lot further down the line if everyone had been on board.

I think the main obstacle for a long time was that governing bodies wanted to protect their sport rather than their players, afraid that parents would stop their kids taking part.