Baxter: Big steps on safety

ROB BAXTER says rugby’s European champions do almost no contact training and that comparing concussion measures today with 20 years ago has “little value”.

Baxter ( above) stepped into sport’s dementia debate as his Exeter team prepare to open their Champions Cup defence against Glasgow on Sunday.

A group of former internationals, notably England World Cup winner Steve Thompson, plan legal action against the game’s authorities for negligence. Thompson ( below) says he can no longer remember England’s 2003 triumph because of brain injuries suffered playing the game.

Players’ union boss Damian Hopley responded by saying “training protocols is something we need to address very quickly” as a “big percentage” of injuries occur during training.

But Baxter leapt to the defence of rugby, claiming it is now “probably the leader in monitoring returnto- play safety practices” around head injuries.

He said: “I don’t think anyone would say it isn’t tragic what’s happened to these players but at the same time it is almost a separate argument to what is happening now.

“The majority of our players don’t do contact. If you define contact as live, no padding, no tackle shields, person on person, full contact, it may happen once or twice a month.

“And how these things are monitored, treated and looked after now is so different to 10 years ago, let alone 15 to 20 years ago.”

Baxter added: “Sometimes we’re a very good sport at jumping on something and creating something huge. Now we are talking about monitoring training loads etc. That’s fine. There’s no reason not to have more discussions about this.

“But I think people are being a little disingenuous if they’re not prepared to say the steps we’ve already taken are huge.”