I 100% get this. I played rugby for years - had some broken bones but no head injuries - but wouldn't actively nudge my kids towards playing it. If they were super keen to play I'd probably grudgingly get them started with it, but with some reservations.
I'd imagine there's plenty in the same boat.
Absolutely.
And I see few ways of solving it. It's an impact sport, if you're slamming 120kg players into each other, their brains are going to bounce around and head hits will happen, no matter how careful you're being.
I've had enough head knocks (don't think I've ever been badly concussed though) that I'm properly worried by this.
The reports are going to get a lot worse before they get any better, HIA protocols only started in 2012 and they weren't properly rolled out until a few years afterwards. I suspect those pros who played between 2000 - 2015 are likely to be the worst affected.
As an example of the culture, here's some insight from David Corkery:
Becoming a professional rugby player was meant to be David Corkery’s dream job. Instead it left his body ‘a car crash’ at 27.
www.the42.ie
By the time I retired, my body was a car crash. I didn’t hold back. I played with broken fingers, trained with broken ribs. I took injections when my shoulders were killing me. You’d have understood all that if it was for a Five Nations game but I’d do it just to go training. By the end of my career, I was in bits.”
From a distance, it seems illogical, silly even. Yet we don’t know how it felt to enjoy and endure those spikes of adrenaline, what it meant to pull on that green shirt and represent your country. Sport is so trivial and yet it can mean so much.
“I look back and know that certain players had more skill in their baby toe than I had but they did not put in the same effort. I loved the game that much. The game left me battered. I ruptured both Achilles, had five operations on my left knee, broke most of my fingers, broke my forearm, had shoulders dislocated, suffered multiple concussions with no lay-off time.”
