A leading sports doctor has warned that rugby union should expect to face a series of legal claims from former players suffering with the aftereffects of concussion injuries. Barry O’Driscoll, a former Ireland international, says the sport will soon find itself in a similar situation to American football. The National Football League recently reached a $765m settlement with a group of more than 4,500 former players who claimed that it had concealed the risk of long-term brain damage.
O’Driscoll, a speaker at Thursday’s Professional Rugby Concussion forum, claimed that rugby’s authorities were “mad” and “cavalier in the extreme” in their approach towards concussion. His strong words came on the day that the Labour MP Chris Bryant, a rugby player himself, called for an urgent debate in parliament on concussion in sport.
“There is real evidence that people, when they are forced to play again after being concussed, can all too easily end up suffering,” Bryant said.
The forum brought together players, coaches, and doctors in an effort to improve the collective understanding of issues around concussion. O’Driscoll, who resigned from the International Rugby Board’s medical advisory board in protest at its handling of concussion injuries, was at the extreme end of the range of views represented.
He feels the IRB’s new Pitch-side Concussion Assessment (PCSA), which means players who are suspected to be suffering with concussion have to leave the field for five minutes to undergo standardised tests, provides inadequate protection against the risk of serious injury.
He also argues that the suspicion of concussion alone should be reason enough to remove a player from a game. “I think the lawyers are licking their lips, I really do,” he said. O’Driscoll added that players who have a PSCA and are allowed to go back on could, in five or 10 years, “start getting severely depressed or migrained”.
The Rugby Football Union’s head of sports medicine, Dr Simon Kemp, pointed out that since the PSCA was introduced, instances of players returning to the field while suffering concussion had fallen from 56% to 13% of all diagnosed cases.
Article source: http://www.nswrl.com.au/default.aspx?s=article-display&id=76268&title=classic-clashes-1991-game-2
Rugby union will face huge legal claims over concussion, says doctor
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