NPR

SaintK wrote: Mon Aug 14, 2023 10:19 am Excellent article
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2F ... rain%2F

inactionman wrote: Fri Feb 24, 2023 9:34 am Although not a head injury, it's a noteworthy legal outcome in a very sad case.

A female player was paralysed from the waist down in a 'reckless' tackle (magistrate's words), and the tackler has been found liable for damages.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ing-player

There's images on the internet I won't link to, but looks similar to the 'crusher' tackle that League has had to actively ban - looks like the tackler caught her as she was bent down picking up from a ruck and smashed her downwards.

Czernuszka-Watts has conquered the challenges she has set herself so far. Twice she has completed the London Marathon, and sailed around Antigua with other wheelchair users.

It was after the first marathon that she decided to fill the hole in her life that sport had previously occupied. That video of sledge hockey - now known as Para-ice hockey - lurked in her memory and so she went to her first session with the Cardiff Huskies.

"I went out the next day and bought my kit. It was like freedom," she says.

In 2021, she answered a call for women with lower-limb disabilities to be a part of the Great Britain women's Para-ice hockey programme. She pulled on the red, white and blue - the number seven on her back once again - for the first time at the inaugural Women's World Challenge in Green Bay, Wisconsin, last year, an achievement made all the more remarkable given she had given birth to her third child eight weeks earlier.

Rugby union is to become the world’s first sport to use technology to automatically withdraw players with a suspected brain injury from the field of play, the Guardian can reveal.

World Rugby is expected to confirm within the next 48 hours that it will adopt smart mouthguard technology, which measures the G-force of every head impact in real time, in all its elite matches to help make the game safer.

The technology, which works by using bluetooth to immediately alert an independent doctor whenever a player suffers a big collision in a tackle or ruck, will be debuted in the WXV women’s match between Italy and Japan on 13 October. It will then be rolled out into the men’s professional game in January, in time for the Six Nations.

SaintK wrote: Sun Oct 08, 2023 1:06 pm Interesting!

Rugby union is to become the world’s first sport to use technology to automatically withdraw players with a suspected brain injury from the field of play, the Guardian can reveal.

World Rugby is expected to confirm within the next 48 hours that it will adopt smart mouthguard technology, which measures the G-force of every head impact in real time, in all its elite matches to help make the game safer.

The technology, which works by using bluetooth to immediately alert an independent doctor whenever a player suffers a big collision in a tackle or ruck, will be debuted in the WXV women’s match between Italy and Japan on 13 October. It will then be rolled out into the men’s professional game in January, in time for the Six Nations.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/202 ... impacts

Masterji wrote: Fri Jul 07, 2023 5:52 pm Rugby is dangerous, people know its dangerous and then people will act surprised when some report or other officially states its dangerous. It's the same with boxing and MMA.

A new brain-cooling treatment for sports-related concussion is being trialled in professional rugby union.

It is the first acute treatment for the injury able to be delivered pitchside and is being used by six clubs in the United Rugby Championship (URC).

'PolarCap' works by delivering targeted cooling to the head and neck for between 45 and 60 minutes following a concussion injury.

The treatment originates from a five-year study in professional ice hockey in Sweden, which found it had the potential to reduce long-term concussion absence.

inactionman wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2024 11:05 am First I've heard of this, but looks promising

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union ... 0lknlv2ylo

A new brain-cooling treatment for sports-related concussion is being trialled in professional rugby union.

It is the first acute treatment for the injury able to be delivered pitchside and is being used by six clubs in the United Rugby Championship (URC).

'PolarCap' works by delivering targeted cooling to the head and neck for between 45 and 60 minutes following a concussion injury.

The treatment originates from a five-year study in professional ice hockey in Sweden, which found it had the potential to reduce long-term concussion absence.

The England World Cup winners Steve Thompson and Mark Regan have accused the Rugby Football Union of “suppressing their medical records” in a significant escalation of their landmark legal battle over brain injuries.
In a letter sent to the Information Commissioner’s Office they and 42 other former players have called for an “urgent investigation” into the failure of the RFU and other rugby bodies to hand over personal data that is pertinent to their case and could be crucial to their clinical treatment. The letter has also been signed by rugby league and amateur players, as well as families of dead former players.

The scars on Barrett Callaghan’s helmet were a source of pride — now, they’re a painful reminder.

inactionman wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2024 9:56 am Interesting but not particularly joyful article about the effect of CTE and head injuries in American football.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/cu ... =longreads

One thing that really caught my eye was an image of the helmet a lad who suffered from CTE used to wear:



The caption for this reads:

The scars on Barrett Callaghan’s helmet were a source of pride — now, they’re a painful reminder.

I appreciate some of that is going to be wear-and-tear from being slung into the car boot after a game, but a fair bit of that must be head-on-head.

If anyone's interested, the lad had a fair few issues in his early 20s with mood swings etc and sadly died in a car crash at 25 - his family donated his brain to the 'Brain Bank' at Boston Uni to help with research into CTE.
https://concussionfoundation.org/person ... -callaghan

Niegs wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2024 1:31 pm
Rucking these days at the highest level (and occasionally below) must be similar to linemen clashes in football, heading the ball in soccer? Sudden jolts, with a lot involving the head to some degree.

Sandstorm wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2024 3:18 pm

Niegs wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2024 1:31 pm
Rucking these days at the highest level (and occasionally below) must be similar to linemen clashes in football, heading the ball in soccer? Sudden jolts, with a lot involving the head to some degree.

It's the forwards doing repeated pick-'n-goes on the try-line and stopping each other with their heads that makes me wince.

Niegs wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 5:49 am Comments on this saying Chessum was also knocked out but 'passed' HIA that shouldn't have been issued (straight off if knocked out).

Slick wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 10:59 am
Players have got to stop being dicks and take some responsibility as well.

Slick wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 10:59 am

Niegs wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 5:49 am Comments on this saying Chessum was also knocked out but 'passed' HIA that shouldn't have been issued (straight off if knocked out).

Players have got to stop being dicks and take some responsibility as well.

JM2K6 wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 4:19 pm

Slick wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 10:59 am

Niegs wrote: Mon Sep 23, 2024 5:49 am Comments on this saying Chessum was also knocked out but 'passed' HIA that shouldn't have been issued (straight off if knocked out).

Players have got to stop being dicks and take some responsibility as well.

Can't think of anyone less responsible for their decisions than a professional player who's just suffered brain trauma

The Times & The Sunday Times

DAVID WALSH
Deluded contact sports are still not serious about player welfare
Troubling recent cases in the NFL, rugby league and rugby union underscore how the authorities are merely paying lip service to concussion and brain-

Saturday October 05 2024, 10.30pm BST, The Sunday Times
For all the talk, slogans, poster campaigns, PR waffle, contact sports still don’t get it. Players’ brains need to be better protected. Everyone involved knows this and many on the inside say this is happening. At best, they’re kidding themselves. At worst, well, you don’t want to think about that.
Last week you may have seen that the Leicester Tigers head coach, Michael Cheika, received a two-week ban, with one week suspended, for showing a lack of respect towards the independent match-day doctor after the Tigers’ game against Exeter Chiefs in the Gallagher Premiership last month. Should you wish to really know what passes for player welfare, stick with me.

Twelve or so minutes from the end of that game, Leicester’s Ollie Chessum and Solomone Kata attempted to tackle Exeter’s Immanuel Feyi-Waboso. Coming from opposite sides, their heads collided. Such was the impact, they collapsed like fallen prize fighters. Kata stayed down for a minute, having a gash treated. Remarkably, it wasn’t considered necessary to remove him for a head-injury assessment (HIA). Chessum stayed down for more than two minutes.

“Clearly, the captain there hit the ground, he won’t be playing any further part in the game. Certainly shouldn’t be, looking at the way he fell,” the TNT Sports co-commentator Ben Kay said. There was nothing controversial in what the former England lock said. Chessum had taken a significant blow to the head and fallen in a manner that suggested he had momentarily lost consciousness.

He left the field in the 69th minute for his 12-minute HIA. Who in God’s name would think of returning him to the fray for the final minute of the game? With 30 seconds remaining on the clock, Chessum returned and his first involvement was to win the lineout that led to the Tigers’ winning try. So, all good then. Not at all. Having reviewed video evidence of the clash of heads, the independent match-day doctor changed his verdict on Chessum. The player, he decided, should have been permanently removed, not sent for a HIA. This change meant Chessum would have to undergo a mandatory 12-day stand-down period, causing him to miss Leicester’s next game.

Cheika was not pleased with the independent doctor’s re-evaluation and after the game spent five minutes telling him just that. The head coach was originally charged with “offensive, disparaging, insulting and intimidatory” behaviour towards the doctor and was then banned for his lack of respect. Thirteen years ago, when head coach at Stade Français, Cheika was fined €20,000 (about £16,740) for insulting, disparaging, intimidatory or offensive comments made to match officials after a European Challenge Cup final against Harlequins.

The perplexing part is how anyone would send Chessum back on the pitch with 30 seconds remaining on the clock. The head collision was serious and it had taken him more than two minutes to get to his feet.

In this world, actions don’t match words, at least not when it comes to player welfare. Last week the Telegraph’s Jeremy Wilson reported on the pre-hearing inquest into the dementia-caused death of the former Middlesbrough footballer Bill Gates. To the hearing, the FA sent the barrister Roger Harris to try to persuade the senior coroner, Jeremy Chipperfield, that it wasn’t necessary to establish whether Gates’s death was caused by playing football
“It is not in the public interest to extend the scope of this inquest to consider the matters that were being suggested in the family’s submissions,” Harris said. “To expand it to the course of the occupation as a footballer is neither desirable, nor proportionate nor necessary.”

Let us put this gently, the coroner was not swayed by the FA’s argument and said he would investigate if Gates’s death was caused by trauma and whether that trauma was caused by playing football. Michael Rawlinson, the barrister representing Gates’s family, criticised the FA for wasting the coroner’s time. From the FA, more platitudes. “We were sad to hear of the death of Bill Gates and we wish to express our sympathy to his family. It would not be appropriate to comment on the coroner’s ongoing investigation.” Neither would it be sensible to try to defend the indefensible.
Last week an inquest into the death of the former South African rugby player Nick Koster reported how, in July last year, Koster had left a mental health hospital in Attleborough, Norfolk, having received permission to walk to nearby shops. He ended his life while away from the facility. Koster captained Cambridge University in the 2018 Varsity match and played for Bath and Bristol. It was reported that his struggle with depression began four months before his death.

There have been a significant number of deaths by suicide of former NFL, rugby league and rugby union players. It would be reassuring to think the authorities were out there, engaging sensitively with the families of the deceased and asking for permission to have the brain of their loved one examined. If chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a greater problem than we think, we need to know. And those who’ve lost loved ones deserve more answers than they’re getting.

Last month the Australian neuropathologist Michael Buckland revealed that he’d found CTE in the brain of the former rugby league star Keith Titmuss, 20, who died four years ago after a gruelling training session with his team, Manly Warringah Sea Eagles. An inquest this year reported that the highly rated Titmuss had died of heatstroke. His family asked for his brain to be examined and Buckland was surprised at the level of CTE he discovered.
“I was surprised that in a 20-year-old you can have a significant burden of this disease, in someone who hadn’t really exhibited any signs or symptoms,” Buckland said.

If you have the time and the inclination, seek out Reid Forgrave’s chilling 2017 story about Zac Easter in the magazine GQ, The Concussion Diaries: One High School Football Player’s Secret Struggle with CTE. Before he ended his life at 24, Easter became convinced he was suffering from CTE and in the five months before his death he kept a diary of what his life had become. He donated his brain to the Concussion Foundation and the post-mortem examination confirmed he had CTE.

Something the London-based neuroradiologist Emer MacSweeney said in a TED talk two years ago should also encourage us to think more about this problem. “Despite the 2015 landmark and multimillion NFL settlement for retired American football players with brain injury, and the 2015 Will Smith movie Concussion, the fear and reality of dementia in contact sports is not adequately known, it is not widely addressed, and it is not going away.”
Those who run our contact sports and talk endlessly about player welfare are deluding themselves while not fooling us.

The man leading the multimillion-pound brain injury lawsuit representing hundreds of rugby players is under investigation from the Solicitors Regulation Authority after a former England international claimed in a submission to court that he felt pressured to lie about having dementia.

In a case this month that has raised questions over how Richard Boardman recruits players to join the lawsuit brought by his firm, Rylands Garth, against World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union, the former Wasps prop Will Green was unsuccessfully sued for legal and medical costs after ­refusing to join the group action.

SaintK wrote: Wed Oct 16, 2024 7:39 am Sounds pretty dodgy!

The man leading the multimillion-pound brain injury lawsuit representing hundreds of rugby players is under investigation from the Solicitors Regulation Authority after a former England international claimed in a submission to court that he felt pressured to lie about having dementia.

In a case this month that has raised questions over how Richard Boardman recruits players to join the lawsuit brought by his firm, Rylands Garth, against World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union, the former Wasps prop Will Green was unsuccessfully sued for legal and medical costs after ­refusing to join the group action.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/202 ... ruitment

SaintK wrote: Wed Oct 16, 2024 7:39 am Sounds pretty dodgy!

The man leading the multimillion-pound brain injury lawsuit representing hundreds of rugby players is under investigation from the Solicitors Regulation Authority after a former England international claimed in a submission to court that he felt pressured to lie about having dementia.

In a case this month that has raised questions over how Richard Boardman recruits players to join the lawsuit brought by his firm, Rylands Garth, against World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union, the former Wasps prop Will Green was unsuccessfully sued for legal and medical costs after ­refusing to join the group action.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/202 ... ruitment