Editorial: Science on head clashes will change our sports forever

Tackles that barely raise an eyebrow in the NRL would land a red card in a Super Rugby Pacific match. Photo / Photosport

EDITORIAL

It’s difficult to imagine a future for the contact sports that Kiwis love, in which the games, the way we play them and the way we experience them are not radically affected by the rise of awareness of the effect of traumatic head injuries.

Big hits are a cherished part of the oval-ball codes that dominate our sporting landscape – and regular hits (be they big or small) are the bread and butter of those sports.

Rugby league and rugby union presently have differing attitudes to the management of these collisions; the 15-player code is seemingly more cautious as it struggles to manage player welfare with the demands for high-quality clashes.

League’s management of the issue seems more prosaic; tackles that barely raise an eyebrow in the NRL would land a red card in a Super Rugby match or – as we’ve learnt to painful effect – in a Rugby World Cup final.

Regardless, both codes – and the combat sports that are increasingly popular with young people – are on a collision course with science as more former athletes are found to have died with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), and lived the later stages of their lives with its awful effects.

Sports organisations have a duty to protect their participants, even ones who go willingly into the fray. Society shares some of that duty, we should encourage and promote recreational activities that are governed by reasonable efforts to protect participants.

In many ways, the science on these issues is still young. So solutions – or, at least mitigating actions – might soon be realised in the shape of protective equipment and rule changes.

But these sports are clearly at the start of a transformative period that could last for many seasons to come.