Rugby Union | Blogs | Paper Round

All the latest from the world of rugby

« BOD will be back | | Tindall was robbed »

November 13, 2011

Posted on 11/13/2011

Rugby needs to use it's head

Writing in The Scotsman, Tom English looks at the increasing concern for brain injuries in American Football and considers what rugby union can learn from their findings.

"Now, up to 500 athletes in America have committed to donate their brain upon death in an attempt to advance the research of the dangers of this condition to sportsmen competing in attritional competition. Many of the deceased National Football League (NFL) players lived out their post-professional years suffering memory loss, impaired judgment, severe headaches, aggression, depression and, in some cases, dementia – the classic symptoms of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Up until last year the NFL was in denial about the relevance of CTE to its game. Now? It is convinced of its dangers and is a huge, if belated, campaigning force to raise the awareness.
"Robert Cantu is wondering about rugby. He knows the sport, has played an active part in the International Rugby Board’s (IRB) medical conferences, has seen some games where the hits have been immense and is suspicious of what might lurk beneath the surface. Sure, American football is an entirely different game to rugby. Until recently the NFL allowed players to effectively use their helmeted head as a weapon against another player. Head-on-head collisions were commonplace in that sport whereas they never have been in rugby.

"And, yes, the research is at a very early stage, too early to extrapolate too much from what they’ve discovered. Also, rugby woke up to the dangers of concussion a while back. Or it likes to think it has anyway. The avoidance of head injuries is the number-one priority, says the IRB. “Is it relevant to our game at the moment? I’d question that, but we want to make the game as safe as possible,” says Martin Raftery, the recently appointed chief medical officer of rugby’s governing body. “There has been no recorded case of CTE in rugby and we’re always looking at this area.”

Feedback