Article from Stuff NZ - and runs interesting parallels with the concussion issues and behaviour changes NFL players have been going through in the States.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/opinion/300125249/mark-reason-sam-burgesss-rage-is-a-warning-to-reckless-new-zealand-rugbySam Burgess's rage is a warning to reckless New Zealand rugbyNew Zealand rugby is out of control. Provincial rugby is currently swinging a wrecking ball at opposing teams. Several players were demolished at the weekend. Some of those will almost certainly suffer dementia at a tragically early age as a result of such tackles. It is as if last year’s World Cup, with its clampdown on dangerous play, never happened.
I watched two games closely at the weekend and then reviewed them. Both should have New Zealand Rugby reading the riot act to coaches, players and referees. Both should have New Zealand Rugby consulting its lawyers about whether they can be held culpable for what went on should players like Tom Sanders, Josh Ioane and Jonah Lowe decide to take action at a future date.
All three suffered serious blows to the head. In my view those blows were the result of New Zealand Rugby allowing the height of the tackle to slip back up over the previous few months. And I have two words to say to Mark Robinson and Brent Impey on the subject of player welfare: ‘Sam Burgess’.
* Sam Burgess stands down from Rabbitohs and Fox Sports over drug, domestic abuse allegations
The Great Britain rugby league player was the subject of an investigation by The Australian newspaper, published at the weekend. The investigation alleges that Burgess was involved in intimidation and harassment and that his club covered up the incidents and injected him with a tranquilising drug. Burgess has been charged by police with intimidation against Mitchell Hooke, the father of his wife Phoebe. Burgess has pleaded not guilty.
His lawyer has called the allegations “an indefensible defamation” against his client. Burgess has stepped down from his coaching job at the Rabbitohs and from his commentary role.
The whole truth is likely never to be known but both Hooke and his daughter Phoebe make one compellingly similar assertion. Phoebe wrote in a text to Rabbitohs’ co owner Russell Crowe; “He might need a good friend, bc he is just not our Sam. And definitely not the beautiful man I married for life.” Hooke speaks of “good” and “bad” Sam and of “suddenly exhibiting a very, very different persona to anything that we had known in Phoebe’s time with him.”
It seems to me that Sam Burgess is a young man urgently in need of help and I have a desperate fear about the reasons. I hope against hope that I am wrong, but it seems to me that Burgess is exhibiting the behaviour typical of so many NFL players after receiving multiple blows to the head.
We can certainly say that Burgess has received multiple blows to the head in his playing career. The most famous or infamous occasion was the 2014 Grand Final when he played almost the entire match with a broken jaw and concussion. After the match Burgess could not even remember his brother’s rollicking run for a try. His mother called him the ultimate hero and then asked, “Why do they do this? What a stupid sport.”
And that is a pretty good summation. Men like Sam Burgess are both warrior heroes and they are future casualties. A quick search told me that Burgess suffered a likely concussion in 2017, a second concussion five days later, and a further concussion last year.
There will be countless more, in training as well as on match days. And so you just hope that his brain is not already in a state of degenerative pulp of a sort that leads to violent mood swings and CTE.
It is the possible case of Burgess and many rugby players like him that make the events of the weekend in New Zealand so worrying. We now know the horrifying consequences of repeated head knocks and yet they still go on. I counted nine high tackles in the opening ten minutes of the game between Canterbury and Wellington. Not one was penalised.
Soon after Sanders took a sickening blow to the head. He was too upright in the tackle despite a trialled law earlier in this season sanctioning players for such recklessness. Referee Paul Williams, to his credit, immediately stopped play.
What followed was appalling. The medics treated Sanders for 90 seconds and then allowed him to play on despite the referee again voicing his concern. Sanders then made a series of unusual errors - not rolling, not releasing, letting the ball out the back of a scrum.
He also took another high shot from Vaea Fifita who came in dangerously at the side of a maul. And yet Sanders was not removed from the field until halftime. NZR must investigate and take action against Canterbury for such negligence.
There were not so many high tackles in the game between Otago and Hawke’s Bay, but there was again a worrying lack of concern for player welfare. Josh Ioane was clearly concussed in a textbook tackle as a result of his own teammate going in high.
And yet Ioane was not removed for an HIA until five minutes after the incident. Somehow he passed. But when he came back on the pitch Ioane clearly wasn’t right. He hit one of the worst punts of his career from a penalty kick and his head, usually still for so long, was coming up early.
Vilimoni Koroi, the Hawke’s Bay fullback, then somehow escaped a red card for taking a man out in the air with absolute disregard for his opponent’s safety. Finally Slade McDowall was sent from the field for a terrible swinging arm that caught Lowe on the head.
As Lowe was being treated, he mumbled 'high tackle' to the referee, or a teammate did. The referee Cam Stone said, “I didn’t see that.” Eventually McDowall was convicted when television evidence saved the onfield officials from their myopia. But then “nobody saw nothing” all weekend.
And that is because they are not looking. New Zealand has become careless again in its attitude to high tackles. The victims are the players and their loved ones. CTE inspires a mindless rage that tears people and their families apart.
New Zealand Rugby needs to take responsibility.
Always a Wasp
Topic: Interesting article about concussion in NZ and possible behavioural issues later (Read 927 times)