Never played the game but have always enjoyed watching it. I get that they have introduced safety measures but the modern game at international level seems to be more about close quarter brute force than the free flowing passing game I watched growing up. The England v France Nations Cup final on Sunday being a case in point, continual pack charges into each other. Would that style of play not be more likely to cause the long term problems being talked about.

Cowshed Cowboy wrote: ↑Thu Dec 10, 2020 1:32 pm Never played the game but have always enjoyed watching it. I get that they have introduced safety measures but the modern game at international level seems to be more about close quarter brute force than the free flowing passing game I watched growing up. The England v France Nations Cup final on Sunday being a case in point, continual pack charges into each other. Would that style of play not be more likely to cause the long term problems being talked about.

The ENG FRA game was a farce and not really representative of where the game is going. I think it has become more free flowing and recent law changes around the ruck (rolling/jackaling) are supposed to make things even quicker.
But you are right, flankers and 8s are these days often measured by how much force they use clearing out a ruck and thats a bad development.

Pseudonomdeplume wrote: ↑Thu Dec 10, 2020 4:21 pmand a broken neck from a spear tackle, I heard from the other side of the field.

Something I will never forget: th sound of a guy's back breaking in the opposing scrum. Luckily, this was in Switzerland, helicopter came within minutes to ferry him to a hospital and he fully recovered. Still not pretty.

Opinion piece from the Guardian:

Reasons to love rugby union are the same as those that make us worry about it
10 December 2020
Andy Bull
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/ ... t-dementia

Football and rugby facing flood of claims over head injuries warning
Neuropathologist Willie Stewart says there is clear evidence between the sports and degenerative brain condition CTE
Jamie Doward
Sun 13 Dec 2020 09.30 GMT
A leading expert on concussion and sport has warned that professional football and rugby will face huge litigation claims in the future if the games’ authorities do not take urgent action to combat brain injuries.

Dr Willie Stewart, consultant neuropathologist at the Queen Elizabeth University hospital, Glasgow, led the Field study research, which revealed last year that footballers were three-and-a-half times more likely to die of neurodegenerative disease than age-matched members of the general population.

Stewart said there was clear evidence of the links between playing the two sports, brain injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain condition first identified in American footballers.

“We’ve got the evidence of high levels of dementia now in sport, and … from pathology studies, which says that part of this dementia pathology in these individuals is CTE, which is a pathology only encountered in those with brain injury.”

However, Bill Sweeney, chief executive of the Rugby Football Union , told the Guardian yesterday that American football, whose national league, the NFL, paid out millions of dollars in compensation after CTE was discovered in the brains of players, was different from rugby union “in the context of brain injuries”.

He said: “There is no scientific proof of the causal link between concussion and CTE, that is not a proven thing. There are differences between American football and rugby union.”

Sweeney’s tone is markedly more sceptical about the links with CTE than even the sport’s international governing body has been in the past.

In 2013, the then International Rugby Board’s chief medical officer Martin Raftery said: “CTE is a form of dementia, and there are studies about boxers and American football players who have suffered repetitive head injuries, so we recognise that there might be a potential link.”

Stewart noted that American footballers play only “about 14 or 16 matches” a season. “They now do not do any contact training during the season and they have modified the game considerably to try to reduce risk. The players who are playing are only on for a few minutes at a time. There’s a pool of dozens of them, if not more, so when the players are on the park it’s high impact but there’s not much of it going on. If you look at football they play dozens of games a season, training every day, the number of headers in football is going up not down, as people try to suggest.”

As for rugby, Stewart said studies had shown that the force and number of head impacts in a professional rugby and American football match were “pretty” similar.

“But professional rugby players are training through the week, contact training still, playing 30 matches a season ... and the season almost never ends now. Potentially, professional rugby is stacking up even more problems than any sport we have seen.”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/ ... es-warning

Ex-Wrestler Daffney Unger, AKA Scream Queen, Dies At 46

In an Instagram Live on Wednesday night, Unger discussed her symptoms of brain injury while holding what appeared to be a small gun, outlets reported.

The video, later deleted, showed an agitated Unger telling viewers that she believed she was suffering from the concussion-related chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, and asked that her brain be donated for examination, Deadline reported. The degenerative disease, linked to repeated blows to the head, can only be identified posthumously.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_6132 ... Dg02GMIMwA

Qualifying for '23 in The Americas:
https://www.world.rugby/news/665846/you ... qualifiers

Ah c'mon...
The All Blacks get beaten ONCE by the Yarpies and you are already asking - Is this end of the world as we know it!!??

Get a grip. It won't happen again in a million years. It's against the Natural Order of the Universe.
EVerybody knows that. including God.

Yeah, well, go you rugby players. Doddie Weir: ‘The government has not given motor neurone disease the money it promised’
Donald McRae
Tue 21 Jun 2022 08.00 BST
Last modified on Wed 19 Oct 2022 18.16 BST

“I’m still here, I’m still fighting,” says Doddie Weir even though motor neurone disease traps him inside his paralysed body. Courage and hope define Weir but he is being tested as never before. The former Scotland lock, who won 61 Test caps and played for the Lions on their triumphant tour of South Africa in 1997, was diagnosed with MND just before Christmas in 2016. He has now reached a brutal stage of deterioration.

Doddie had Googled his symptoms and warned Kathy he might have MND. “That was due to my rugby. Before every game I always expected the worst. So I wasn’t shocked.”

Kathy shakes her head. “When Doddie first mentioned he might have MND I thought: ‘Absolutely not.’ So it was a big blow and I went through a period of shock and grieving. I’m not moaning because we were lucky and made the most of what we could do. We’ve packed a lot in.”

He and his remarkable wife, Kathy, still swap quips laced with black humour. Weir also retains the campaigning zeal which has seen his foundation – My Name’5 Doddie – raise £8m in the battle against MND while he challenges doctors to increase the intensity of their research.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/ ... ugby-union