Banning contact sport not the answer, says CTE expert
Even as sport continues to come to terms with the impact of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), one of New Zealand’s leading experts never wants to see a world where sport can’t exist.
CTE is a neurological condition linked to repeated head trauma that sees a patient’s brain deteriorate over time. Symptoms include memory deficits, mood changes and movement issues, among others.
This year, former Māori All Blacks and Blues halfback Billy Guyton was found to have CTE after his death in 2023. In early May, it was revealed an unnamed former Kiwis rugby league representative was New Zealand’s first international sportsperson to have died with the condition.
But for Dr Helen Murray, one of New Zealand’s leading experts in neuroscience focusing on CTE, removing risk by taking sport off the table altogether is the wrong option.
Murray is a former member of the Ice Fernz, the New Zealand women’s ice hockey team.
“You’ve got to maintain perspective,” she told the Herald. “Not everyone who plays a contact sport is going to develop a neurodegenerative condition. In fact, the vast majority won’t. Part of the research is trying to figure out why some people do and some don’t.
“We need to be careful. Diagnosis of dementia or cognitive decline is a life-changing thing, for the person, for their family. We don’t want to get it wrong. That weighs on me a lot.
“We don’t want to incite fear. Sport has so many positive benefits. I don’t think we should forget that.
“As someone who plays a contact sport, and loves my contact sport, I’d never tell someone they shouldn’t do something they are passionate about.
“We just have to look really honestly at the sports we play and ask where there is risk that doesn’t need to be there.
“I’m not anti-sport at all. There’s risk in everything we do in life but there is stuff we can do to make it as safe as we can.”
Murray advises minimising risk through later participation in highcontact sport, introducing participation at later ages to allow the brain to further develop before it’s placed at risk.