Rugby: Concussion case casts dark cloud over the sport

LONDON: The rugby year ended with the sport excitedly looking ahead to the next World Cup while bracing for a potentially seismic challenge to the very fabric of the game through a legal case citing negligence over concussion.

As the draw was made for the 2023 World Cup in France with several teams, including champions South Africa, not having played a game since the last tournament 13 months ago due to COVID-19, French president Emmanuel Macron acclaimed the event and the sport for its ability to heal his country's wounds.

Yet the first question World Rugby deputy chairman Bernard Laporte was asked was not about the mouth-watering New Zealand v France pool clash in three years, but about the impending legal action against his organisation, the RFU and the WRU.

This is being brought by a group of former players, led by England's 2003 World Cup-winning hooker Steve Thompson, who are all suffering early-onset dementia in their forties and claim that the sport's governing bodies failed in their duty to protect them from the long-term impact of multiple head traumas.

The players say their main motivation is to make the game safer, but the prospect of a multi million-pound settlement is also in the air.

Laporte responded by saying the sport is "a model in terms of research, innovation and mastering this area", and there is no question that concussion and player welfare is being addressed, not least in changes to the laws over tackle technique, in a way never considered in the "suck it up" days of rugby's early professional years.

With the NFL having settled a US$765 million class action concussion case seven years ago, the financial impact has the potential to bankrupt the sport, but Thompson's harrowing account of how he can no longer remember winning the World Cup and is suffering daily mental struggles could also do equal reputational damage.

Many concerned parents will surely decide - progress or not - that the risk to the health of their children is just too great and their sporting futures would be better served elsewhere. How rugby deals with that, while retaining its unique physicality, will be an enormous challenge at every level.