The Australian Rugby League Commission chairman, Peter V’landys, unveiled a slew of legislative amendments in December 2020 aimed at boosting the flow and spectacle of rugby league. “You’ve got to give the customer what they want,” he told me.
The announcement alluded to modifications made in preparation for the 2021 season, with V’landys claiming that “it is apparent that the new ideas last season were a success… The six-again rule has addressed the game’s main issue, which was the wrestling.”
Maybe it was a figure of speech, or perhaps it is indicative of the closeted bubble that the NRL operates within, but is wrestling really a bigger issue in rugby league than the existential threat that is concussion?
The matter of head injury is a concern for all contact sports. Typically, sports approach the matter from two distinct angles: the treatment and management of affected players; and the design and application of laws and coaching to minimise instances of concussions occurring in the first place.
Complicating the matter is a mounting body of research that suggests a high proportion of player concussions are not one-off major events but an accumulation of seemingly minor occurrences. For example, cases from soccer, attributed to heading footballs over a long period of time, fall into this category.
This has implications for how sporting administrations address things like the amount of contact training that is undertaken, and poses a difficult challenge given the relative ease with which these types of ‘small’ knocks can be picked up.
Notwithstanding, in the two rugby codes and AFL, there are frequent instances of concussions occurring from one-off, high-impact, trauma events.
Both the AFL and rugby union strictly enforce rules concerning high contact. They are prepared to wear the cost of a ‘soft’ penalty or free-kick for an arm slipping over the shoulder as a device to compel tacklers into aiming lower.
Other sports are far tougher than rugby league when it comes to penalising and suspending players for forceful high contact. For example, in eight matches of Super Rugby so far this season, there have been five players sent off and suspended, one for a dangerous tip tackle and four for striking or forceful contact to the head of an opponent.
In the NRL, since 2016 – where there have been many more matches and countless more instances of head-high contact – only five players have been sent off in total. Of those, only two involved head contact: Curtis Scott for punching and Chad Townsend for an after-the-whistle, high, flying shoulder-charge.
Neither rugby union nor the AFL are blame-free when it comes to concussion. But their actions (including a new ‘head contact process’ released by World Rugby, and the pending appointment of a head of concussion by the AFL) at least reflect organisations with some understanding of the importance of the issue.
Rugby league, meanwhile, concerns itself with getting rid of the wrestle and tidying up its off-field image, lest it lose sponsors.
In September last year, I examined the NRL’s laws pertaining to high tackles, and the refereeing and judiciary outcomes relating. It made for sobering and concerning reading.
Week after week, multiple players are subjected to head knocks serious enough to warrant head injury assessments (HIAs). Many of these are a result of high contact by a tackling player – illegal under the NRL’s own rules.
For many people in the game, including media and fans, when a player is hit in the head in a high tackle, too often the focus is on any perceived injustice for the offending player, should he be sent to the sin bin or placed on report.
There are multiple risk factors at play for the NRL. Increasing media focus on the dangers of concussion potentially leading parents to prevent their children from taking up rugby league, and more players coming forward with concussion-related medical conditions to sue the NRL, are two obvious ones.
Another potential concern is the sport being subject to penalty under industrial relations laws. There is a growing body of opinion that historic cases such as that of UK footballer Jeff Astle, where a causative link was established between his head trauma and his profession, and Australia’s James Hardie asbestosis case, where a breach of duty of care in an industrial framework was established, means that in a professional sporting context, concussion and its consequential neurological impairments create an industrial disease.
During 2019 and 2020, WorkSafe Victoria conducted no fewer than three investigations into the AFL with respect to concussion. The reports have not been made public, yet the fact the investigations occurred at all, and the AFL acted last month to drastically toughen its return to play protocols from a minimum six days to twelve, points to a degree of concern with respect to potential liability.
Late last year, I contacted SafeWork NSW to inquire if any similar investigations were ongoing, or being contemplated, with respect to concussion in the NRL. A spokesperson provided the following response”
Leave a Reply