[imagesource:here]

43-year-old English World Cup winner Steve Thompson (that’s not him above) spoke candidly last year about being diagnosed with early-onset dementia, and how his life after retiring from rugby has been an uphill battle.

Thompson said he experienced mood swings, panic attacks, withdrew socially, and sometimes struggled to remember his wife’s name.

He even admitted that he cannot remember winning the Rugby World Cup in 2003, and said he regretted taking up the sport.

Thompson was one of a number of players proposing to bring legal proceedings against various rugby boards and institutions after they received the same diagnosis – dementia with probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), for which the only known cause is repeated blows to the head.

Most of those players had enjoyed lengthy careers, but a study published in the Journal of Experimental Physiology this week says that even a single season of professional rugby can have a lasting effect.

The study was carried out by researchers at the University of South Wales (USW) on 21 players – 13 forwards and eight backs – from a team in the United Rugby Championship (previously the PRO14).

Researchers tested during pre-season before the 2020/21 campaign, throughout the 31-game season, and then after the season finished.

CNN below:

All of the participants… experienced a decline in brain function, which included the ability to reason, remember, formulate ideas and carry out mental tasks.

…the study is the first to highlight how repeated contact sustained in rugby games and training can lead to reduced blood flow to the brain in one season…

According to [study co-author] Professor Bailey, those involved were exposed to 11,000 contact events per season, per player. He advocates for increased screening of rugby players to better understand the effects of these repeated collisions over the course of a career.

The fact that there was a decline after just a single season, when many top rugby players can spend in excess of 15 years as a professional, is alarming.

Professor Bailey said that research is still in the early stages of understanding the impact on a rugby player’s brain, but that he was “certainly fearful for the younger kids engaging in sport”.

He says he has no desire to try and stop the game of rugby, but rather to see it made safer.

RTE reports:

“I think there is sufficient evidence now for us to start tackling this head-on, and to consider interventions to manage it perhaps better than we are currently are, and for more studies to be supported.

“There is more surveillance, but I think we could be a lot more aggressive in terms of reducing contact in training. We could be much more aggressive in terms of substitutes not coming on fresh for the ‘big hits’, and also to be a lot more comprehensive in the way we screen players… My big concern is the guys who are in retirement that are suffering with a poor quality of life.”

World Rugby has issued a statement saying that player welfare “always will be our number one priority”.

The sport’s international governing body also added that it has doubled its “investment in player welfare and new concussion research and initiatives”.

However, Professor Bailey believes further steps need to be taken, saying rugby’s response is “reactive” rather than proactive:

“The big question for this research really is just laying the foundation stone for trying to understand what happens to the retired professional rugby player’s brain in later life,” he added.

“The brain aging process — is it accelerated (in rugby players) relative to … (those) who don’t engage in rugby?”

Progressive Rugby, an organisation pushing for the sport to adapt in a way that benefits player health, welcomed the research.

[sources:cnn&rte]