Standards

While much of the virtual ink spilled in this blog is directed against American football, there are plenty of other physically violent sports out there in the world. Hockey has been implicated in a number of posthumously diagnosed cases of CTE, particularly among some well-known "enforcers" such as Bob Probert, and the overdose death of Derek Boogaard (an active player at the time). International soccer, though not necessarily considered a violent sport, was shocked by the diagnosis of CTE after the death of Bellini, a star of the Brazilian team of the late 1950s and early 60s.  The thoroughly insane sport of Australian football (called "Australian rules football" back when ESPN used to air it in its early days), was drawn into the discussion when preliminary experiments in diagnosing CTE before death pointed to a possible diagnosis for one of its more notorious players.

And then there's rugby. Talk about insane sports.

It shows up on college campuses as a club sport in some cases. I have memories of one of my suitemates, during my freshman year at college, coming back from those club contests looking as if he had been assaulted; bruises everywhere, walking with a pronounced limp, and at least once missing a tooth. Only his maniacal grin suggested he had taken the beating voluntarily.

While it hasn't hit the big time in the US, it is one of the most popular sports in other parts of the world, particularly some of the nations once part of the British Empire. New Zealand recently won its second consecutive Rugby World Cup, and parts of it were broadcast on one of those lower-tier sports networks that show up on some US cable systems, to pretty decent ratings in some quarters. I actually tried to watch a semifinal match, between New Zealand and South Africa, to try and get a grasp on just how much violence to the head was aparent (the game wasn't terribly revealing, as New Zealand was clearly dominant).

But in the British Isles, a death in rugby has rocked youth sports and led to a push for unified standards for concussion diagnosis, nationwide and across sports.

Benjamin Robinson, 14, died in January 2011 after a match in his native Northern Ireland, in which he suffered multiple severe blows to the head due to collisions and ground impact. The failure of officials and coaches (and teammates) to recognize and respond to the young man's increasingly dire condition would likely have gone unnoticed except that his parents refused to let it go. A second inquest revealed that at least three blows, as opposed to one as suggested in the initial report. They began to seek answers, despite lack of police interest and school resistance. Finally, with lawyers involved, a video surfaced showing Benjamin Robinson suffering at least three severe blows, not just the final blow to which the death had been initially attributed.

Because Benjamin's parents, Peter Robinson and Karen Walton, pursued answers about their son's death, and with the support of Scotland's foremost medical expert on sports and brain trauma, Scotland adopted nationwide standards to be used across all sports for determining removal from a game or time required to recover. This is a significant step in any part of the United Kingdom, which has in some ways been much slower than American sports to react to the ongoing brain-trauma issue, partly due to sadly misguided attitudes that rugby, a less "armored" sport than American football, was less prone to head trauma. Unlike in the US, though, Scotland has adopted the aforementioned across-the-board standards, while American sports are regulated, if at all, by individual leagues or conferences or associations. As a result, concussion or head-trauma protocols vary widely.

The application of such standards hasn't prevented problems; earlier this month a rugby player in England died after a head injury suffered in a match, the second female rugby player to die in England in a little over a year. Lily Partridge had suffered two concussions previously, but had stayed out of action the required period of time before returning to action after the second, according to coaches and teammates. This came after a tournament in February, in which a Welsh player was not removed from a match despite two major head blows, and was not even assessed after the second blow.

I am left with two observations:

1. Try as we might, we really aren't capable of doing anything to prevent these head injuries in these violent sports. Even with standards in place, on-field officials and coaches are not capable of seeing every play clearly enough to identify head blows that call for assessment, apparently.

2. Robinson and Walton didn't quietly acquiesce in the initial official report on their son's death. I truly, sadly doubt that American parents have the nerve or perseverance to be so tenacious when their sons are claimed by the games they play. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've seen very little evidence of this so far.

Benjamin Robinson