Progressive Rugby

This blog stands 100% behind the efforts of “Progressive Rugby” – a new lobby group headed by James Haskell and Jamie Cudmore – which is calling for urgent reforms to the game to improve the health and safety of rugby players.

The group of 28 signatories, including former English hooker Steve Thompson and former Welsh backrow Alix Popham (both of whom have recently revealed a diagnosis of dementia) as well as current Welsh player Josh Navidi, have written an open letter to World Rugby in which they call for changes to the game to protect players from the consequences of repeated concussive and sub-concussive injuries, expressing the fear that, unless something is done urgently, rugby could face “extinction within a couple of generations.” 

Some of the changes proposed include imposing limits on contact training, restricting the number of permitted substitutes for injury and increasing the minimum return to play protocol period to three weeks.

Just watching international rugby these days makes me wince. It is so brutal, and the number of players leaving the field of play for head injury assessments (with very few returning), although reassuring insofar as head injuries are at least now being taken seriously, is also pretty concerning and hardly something that would encourage a parent to allow their child to take up the sport.

World Rugby needs to act, and fast. In the US the NFL have had measures in place to reduce concussive injuries for years and have agreed settlements with former players, whilst in Australia the AFL re considering the establishment of a trust to provide aftercare to former players suffering from the effects of brain injuries. 

The time to act is therefore now…

Total Flanker – the older I get, the better I was