balmain boy
Well-known member
In all seriousness, I believe the Australia culture is having a hugely understated impact on the quality of life of our past athletes. Proving how tough you are and not letting your mates down are qualities that society admires.
In reality, from a medical perspective (but no i'm not a doctor), most concussions take more than a week to heal. Some may take a few weeks, a month or more. Yet almost all athletes in all sports in Australia play the following week. In ice hockey, for example, a player will usually sit out 2-4 weeks after a concussion to ensure the original injury is healed and potential damage from any potential '2nd hits' are minimised. It may be a few months off if they've already had a concussion in the past year.
While the NRL is now active on concussion testing in-game those who are diagnosed with concussion appear to be hastily brought back to action.
And while there is no magic number after which a player should call it quits, 3-4 concussions is often seen as about the max which is deemed acceptable before retirement comes into play. But each case needs to be taken on it's own merits and symptoms.
While Australia usually leads the way in sports medicine, I think the Americans are far ahead of us in this regard, not out of foresight but out of necessity. More than 10 000 former ice hockey and American football players have sued their governing bodies for a lack of care. So now these sports are getting a lot more stringent on their concussion rules.
Closer to home the likes of Mario Fenech and our own Liam Fulton are pin-up boys for concussion, but too many players who aren't at the elite level simply don't get the attention or resources they need.
I look at Ray Stone and worry about him as he's already had multiple concussions in the past year alone. There might be a 90% chance that players are fine to back up the following week, but that would still mean there's a 10% chance they're not. And the consequences if they're not, and something happens, can be fatal. Sometimes immediately, sometimes it may take months or eyars for that brai damage to take effect. Really not worth the risk for the sake of an extra week.
As I said in the Aloiai thread I'm certainly not one who dislikes the physicality of league, but some more serious approaches need to be made or else a lot of former league players will have brains like vegetables by the time they're 50\. I want to win games, but I don't want any of our players - not the Tedescos but also not the Milones, Innosesios or the Bartleys - to live the rest of their lives with dementia, migraines, sleeping disorders, memory loss, depression etc just for the sake of an extra win in a season.
I wonder if anyone else thinks we're too short sighted on the long term effects of concussion or have their own stories of those affected by it?
If anyone's interested here are a couple of links which go into a bit of detail.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-trauma/201410/when-quit-contact-sports-due-concussion
http://usafootball.com/blogs/health-and-safety/post/9778/how-many-concussions-is-too-many
https://www.statnews.com/2016/01/11/concussions-counseling-experts-debate/
In reality, from a medical perspective (but no i'm not a doctor), most concussions take more than a week to heal. Some may take a few weeks, a month or more. Yet almost all athletes in all sports in Australia play the following week. In ice hockey, for example, a player will usually sit out 2-4 weeks after a concussion to ensure the original injury is healed and potential damage from any potential '2nd hits' are minimised. It may be a few months off if they've already had a concussion in the past year.
While the NRL is now active on concussion testing in-game those who are diagnosed with concussion appear to be hastily brought back to action.
And while there is no magic number after which a player should call it quits, 3-4 concussions is often seen as about the max which is deemed acceptable before retirement comes into play. But each case needs to be taken on it's own merits and symptoms.
While Australia usually leads the way in sports medicine, I think the Americans are far ahead of us in this regard, not out of foresight but out of necessity. More than 10 000 former ice hockey and American football players have sued their governing bodies for a lack of care. So now these sports are getting a lot more stringent on their concussion rules.
Closer to home the likes of Mario Fenech and our own Liam Fulton are pin-up boys for concussion, but too many players who aren't at the elite level simply don't get the attention or resources they need.
I look at Ray Stone and worry about him as he's already had multiple concussions in the past year alone. There might be a 90% chance that players are fine to back up the following week, but that would still mean there's a 10% chance they're not. And the consequences if they're not, and something happens, can be fatal. Sometimes immediately, sometimes it may take months or eyars for that brai damage to take effect. Really not worth the risk for the sake of an extra week.
As I said in the Aloiai thread I'm certainly not one who dislikes the physicality of league, but some more serious approaches need to be made or else a lot of former league players will have brains like vegetables by the time they're 50\. I want to win games, but I don't want any of our players - not the Tedescos but also not the Milones, Innosesios or the Bartleys - to live the rest of their lives with dementia, migraines, sleeping disorders, memory loss, depression etc just for the sake of an extra win in a season.
I wonder if anyone else thinks we're too short sighted on the long term effects of concussion or have their own stories of those affected by it?
If anyone's interested here are a couple of links which go into a bit of detail.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-trauma/201410/when-quit-contact-sports-due-concussion
http://usafootball.com/blogs/health-and-safety/post/9778/how-many-concussions-is-too-many
https://www.statnews.com/2016/01/11/concussions-counseling-experts-debate/
