According to a recent story on the BBC Sport website, medical experts have highlighted the risk of Rugby players developing head injuries, and have called for training sessions to limit, or possibly ban entirely, contact training sessions to reduce the overall risk to players.
According to English rugby’s latest annual injury audit, the report highlights that concussions were the most common and reported injury during the 2016/17 season (this was also the case for the previous five seasons) and that a third of all injuries were sustained during training sessions. The audit findings also show that there was a level of 20.9 concussions for every 1,000 hours of professional match play.
Over the last few years, concussion has become a major talking point in professional sport and the need to improve player safety in rugby and other sports, such as boxing, football and hockey, is essential.
Reduced or no contact training sessions
With regards to training sessions having limited or no contact at all to reduce the number of reported concussions, this view is supported by Consultant Neuropathologist, Dr Willie Stewart, who informed BBC Scotland:
“I know some former professional players who looked forward to the weekend match because it gave them a rest.
“We’re talking about diagnosable, recognisable brain injuries – there’s more and more evidence coming that it’s not just the ones that produce symptoms that are the problem, it’s the cumulative effect of all the smaller ones as well, the ones that don’t necessarily produce symptoms.
“If during the week, instead of having several days of contact training with more and more impacts on top of each other, you do away with that, you’re going to phenomenally reduce the number of impacts over the season and that can’t be a bad thing.”
How can Nelsons help?
The effects of concussion and head injuries can have serious, long-term effects on a person’s life. At Nelsons, we deal with complex brain and head injury claims and have a strong track record of maximising compensation for our clients.
We also have a long connection with Headway, the brain injury association, and are on their approved solicitors’ list and working within the Headway Personal Injury Solicitors Code of Conduct. We are assessed each year by Headway to ensure we have the required level of knowledge and experience to handle these specialist claims.
If you have any questions in relation to the topics discussed above, please contact one of our expert Personal Injury team on 0800 024 1976 or contact us via the online form.