Paul Lewis: Concussion train steaming straight at world rugby

Former All Black Carl Hayman is one of 150 players involved in a landmark lawsuit. Photo / Getty

OPINION:

At the turn of every year, it's journalistic habit to run the rule over a sport, to look back on the triumphs and disasters of the year and to give the sport in focus a friendly nudge towards the future.

Try that with rugby and you wind up being endlessly transported to a metaphorical railway line where you watch between your fingers as the concussion train steams towards the world game, with no sign of any braking.

We can't even say 2022 will be the year when all this is tidied up. A year has already elapsed since players announced they were preparing to sue World Rugby, Wales and England's Rugby Union after diagnoses of dementia or post-concussion syndrome; it will be a lot longer before resolution.

However, the landmark lawsuit involving 150 former professional players (including former All Black Carl Hayman) produces the distinct feeling the game faces a rather large bill.

Some of World Rugby's recent statements, as both parties adopt careful positions, have seemed a little like circling the legal wagons. That was before the new CEO of World Rugby, Alan Gilpin, came out with a recent opinion piece containing a heartfelt summary of all World Rugby is doing – including their "global brain health education" partnership with independent experts and Brain Health Scotland.

It's aimed at helping to inform current and former elite players on the many factors shaping positive brain health and thereby reducing the chances of dementia in later life, Gilpin said.

Without lessening the sympathy felt for players facing a horribly reduced quality of life after a dementia diagnosis, it is possible to feel a bit sorry for rugby authorities too. Taking responsibility without admitting liability? It's a tightrope over a chasm in a tornado.

The players claim rugby's governing bodies (not including New Zealand Rugby because of our ACC legislation which protects against such suits) failed to protect players from the risks caused by concussions and sub-concussions. It will open legal cans of worms, like a variation on implied consent – the legal argument that playing the game includes a kind of unsigned waiver, accepting that a physical contact sport has risks and, as Tana Umaga might say, isn't tiddlywinks.

Maybe the best guide as to where all this might end up is the 2012 lawsuit in the US, combining multiple concussion-related lawsuits on behalf of more than 4500 National Football League players. They accused the NFL of negligence and failing to notify players of the link between concussions and brain injuries – a suit finally settled in 2015, with up to US$1 billion in compensation for retired players with serious medical conditions linked to repeated head trauma.

In 2016, a senior NFL official in front of the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, was asked if there was a link between football and degenerative brain disorders like CTE. Jeff Miller, the NFL's senior vice president of health and safety policy, answered: "The answer to that question is certainly, yes."

Gilpin, in his opinion piece, listed the measures World Rugby is taking to help guard against head trauma and resulting complications. But one thing all rugby bodies – including New Zealand Rugby – can also do is make some far-reaching changes to how the game is played to help make it safer, as well as more entertaining.

It's easy for a collision in rugby to lead to accidental foul play. Photo / Getty

Rugby has evolved into a fast-paced, bruising game with ever bigger and faster athletes presenting a damaging wall of defence, with double tackles, blurred offsides, clean-outs of players without the ball. It has become less entertaining; defences often stifle creativity; repetition rules; multiple phases mean scoring is often achieved through attrition rather than attractive play.

Bulked-up players give their best for about an hour before being replaced by half a team of more power athletes. Sickening, accidental head clashes have become more common. Anyone who has played the game to a reasonable level knows that it is all too easy to get a tackle wrong; the ball carrier can, and does, take elusive or head-on action; decisions are made at pace and in split seconds.

Surely it's time, in tandem with the concussion issue, to restructure the game so that, as used to happen, the forwards are engaged more in a battle for possession and not always strung out in the backline, adding more bricks to the wall of defence.

Rugby can legitimately say it is helping to protect players from head injury by changing rules which give rise to them, as best they can, like:

-Remove the clean-out – the only part of rugby where it is legal to tackle someone without the ball.

-Bring back something close to the old ruck, ironically shelved because administrators felt the use of boots and sprigs to win possession looked dangerous; a disincentive to young people. Doesn't seem quite so dangerous now, does it?

-No contact training; it's where injuries often happen.

-No substitutions unless for genuine, medically checked, injuries. Players otherwise to play for 80 minutes – ending the era of players bulked up to give maximum effort over 60 minutes before being replaced, encouraging the return of lighter, faster players.

-Move the offside zone back and police it properly to give attackers more time.