CONCUSSION REPERCUSSIONS
Impending brain injury lawsuit could rock rugby with significant shift towards safety
The 295 former players involved in a concussion lawsuit allege that rugby authorities failed to put in reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of players.
While the 2023 Rugby World Cup was deemed a resounding success, with record crowds packing stadiums across France, the global tournament was played against an ominous backdrop of a brain injury lawsuit that could rock the sport’s very foundation.
England World Cup winner Phil Vickery and former Wales centre Gavin Henson were recently included among 295 ex-players suing three of the sport’s governing bodies, helping make the issue of concussion difficult to ignore.
Rugby is the latest sport to face a reckoning because of its high concussion rate — either make the sport safer to play or risk costly lawsuits that could threaten its financial viability.
The 295 former players allege that World Rugby, England’s Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union failed to put in reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of players.
Former Wales centre Gavin Henson is one of the players involved in the lawsuit. Here he is in action for the Dragons in a European Challenge Cup match against Bordeaux Begles in 2018. (Photo: Athena Pictures/Getty Images)
The diversity of the group — men and women, amateur and professional, ranging in age from 22 to 80 — shows the sheer scale of the damage.
Former England hooker Steve Thompson is a heartbreaking example and was among the first to file a legal claim. The 45-year-old has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia and has said he does not remember winning the 2003 tournament.
The application for a group litigation order is expected to be decided by London’s high court in April or May.
Safety rules
The suit raises questions about whether rugby could withstand an NFL or NHL-style lawsuit. Will it adapt safety rules to avoid future lawsuits?
The NFL settled a groundbreaking lawsuit in 2013 with a probable total cost of more than $1-billion involving thousands of former players. In 2019, the NHL paid $18.49-million to settle a concussion lawsuit brought by more than 100 former players.
Read more in Daily Maverick: International expert panel revises concussion protocols to mitigate against harmful consequences
The UK case is one ripple amid what feels like an impending tidal wave of change. Earlier this month England’s Rugby Football League ruled that tackling above the armpit in the 13-man code will be banned in matches from next year to increase the sport’s safety.
Steve Thompson of England. (Photo: David Rogers/Getty Images)
There is also pressure for change in soccer. The Premier League has urged the law-making International Football Association Board (Ifab) to trial temporary substitutions to allow players with head injuries to be assessed, a call supported by global players’ union Fifpro.
There is ongoing research around the brain injury risks of heading the ball, including the Journal of the American Medical Association’s study of more than 450 retired professionals in the UK published in July which found the “risk of cognitive impairment increased with the cumulative heading frequency.”
Days later, Canada midfielder Quinn and Costa Rica’s Rocky Rodriguez were among players spotted wearing the Q-Collar, a horseshoe-shaped half-ring worn around the back of the neck, at the 2023 Women’s World Cup as the quest for protective gear continues.
The NFL has seen more and more players wearing Guardian Caps — protective soft shells that cover helmets that have been shown to decrease concussion risk — in training although there are still no plans to wear them in games. Reuters/DM
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I’m puzzled that things got this far, because it is not a new learning that knocks to head whilst playing rugby can do damage.
I was in high school in South Africa in the 1970s. There was a rule in school rugby back then: If you lost conciousness once you had to sit out the rest of that match. A second time in the same season and your rugby playing days were over. So they understood back then that there were dangers to player health, and they took some precautions.
The system then was not perfect. The rule I described relied on Durban schools sharing information, and also sharing that with Durban clubs. But a friend of mine took two bad knocks in his matric year, then went to the army and kept quiet about his blows to the head. The regiment had no idea of his history until he took another blow to the head and then started acting strangely.
That was getting on 50 years ago. By now rugby should have found a way to minimise such injuries, and had that filter all the way down to the youngest age groups.
While I of course feel for the affected players and understand the desire for better protection, I struggle to credit that rugby governing bodies can be held “responsible”. I say this as it surely assumes they were in some way withholding information from players regarding concussion and its risks.
Clearly this cannot be the case given the massive body of empirical evidence openly available to the medical fraternity and the players themselves. Indeed every parent knows that when they let their child play rugby , they are opening their child up to risk at some level, so I would have thought in this instance children could actually have more of a case – given their youth and ignorance – against their own parents than an adult would have against the rugby governing bodies who, whole certainly from what I’ve seen have twisted the rules of rugby so far in the interests of safety that it is no longer the game I played at school.