JEFF PROBYN
A FRONT ROW VIEW OF THE GAME
AS IF things in the game aren’t bad enough, the BBC’s Rugby On Trial shown on Monday looks set to impact on the number of new and current players across the game.
The legal action taken against World Rugby, the WRU and the RFU was highlighted in the programme, with those bodies accused of not doing enough to protect players from injuries simply by allowing injured players to resume playing once given medical clearance by a doctor who may have been working for the club the player played for.
I have to be honest and say if a club doctor wrongly gave the players clearance to play, then it is the doctor who should be sued and not the sports governing body who may not have had knowledge or details of that player’s injury.
In truth, it was more a case of the Unions not protecting some of the players from themselves, who during the show admitted that they had lied to gain a quicker return to playing the game than they should have.
This could totally undermine any claim they have against the governing bodies, as any long term injury created from playing while injured would be a direct result of their own cover up.
Former prop Jason Hobson who played over 100 games for Bristol and was capped just once by England in 2008, said he believes rugby was quite brutal when he played and that training was ‘relentless’.
Training which is undertaken at clubs could add to the number of the ‘minor’ head collisions that occur and also increase the risk of potential long term damage, but those sessions are controlled and managed by the coaches at each club, so are their responsibility.
If training levels go unchecked it’s quite possible that players were over training and sustained the ‘slow motion car crash’ injuries that were referred to in the programme by the lawyer leading the court case.
Again, this is no fault of the Unions or World Rugby, with the blame firmly laid at the door of the clubs and their coaches who should know that a training week must always have break days to allow players to recover from training sessions before and after games. Research is still ongoing into the causes and potential treatments of both early onset dementia and Alzheimer’s, particularly in America, where they are experiencing an increase in cases of 373 per cent in Generation X and Millennials (30-44 year old), with the condition more commonly diagnosed in women who make up 58 per cent of cases.
This would indicate that, as rugby is not a major sport in America, there must be other causes of this terrible condition that have yet to be identified. In fact, the vice president of medical affairs for BCBSA confirmed: “Further education and research is needed to learn more about early onset dementia and how to treat it and what can be done to prevent it.”
Currently, of nearly one million people in the UK living with dementia, there are over 70,800 with early onset dementia, which is difficult to diagnose as its symptoms are often mistaken for other illnesses and may take up to four and half years before being confirmed.
“If a club doctor wrongly cleared a player to play, then the doctor should be sued”
As players, we all know that rugby is a contact sport with laws that instruct how to play the game and what is and is not allowed, plus the risks that the game entails. However, it is the coach who organises training sessions at the clubs, county and internationals and it is them that define how you play as a team.
Whether that is South Africa‘s bomb squad, England’s blitz defence or the rush defence that has now flooded the game, it was solely the coaches who decided to include these variations in playing the game, trying to create a winning team, and nothing to do with governing bodies of the sport.
What seems strange is that only professionals and semi professional players seem to be involved in the action which, given the number of amateur players who all play the game under the same laws, doesn’t make sense.
If early onset dementia cases are just occurring in the professional game then it must be something those clubs are doing that is not happening in the rest of the game, so those clubs must be held responcible for that not the whole game. As inventive as coaches may wish to be, they must still stick to the laws of the game when coaching a team, whatever the level.
As far as I know, no players have ever made any accusations against the Unions of not providing protection against injury while playing the game with these accusations only appearing after the NFL case.
With the court case not yet begun and despite the potential of an out of court settlement that failed to be agreed despite talks for a number of years, it looks as if finally it will be going ahead in the next few weeks.
All of us who have been involved in the game know that the laws are there to protect players even though some players ignore them, which is why the game has a referee who is there to enforce the laws.
As one of the first group of players asked to have the various tests to see if I have suffered any long term damage from my 34-year career in rugby, I was lucky to escape so far without major problems and was always cared for by the RFU if injured while playing.
It will be interesting to hear what evidence will be provided which will prove the Unions to have failed in their duty and whether that will convince the judge in his/her findings.
