It’s all just a morality play unless kids from the age of 16 are signing waivers that absolves the governing body from taking any responsibility. I watched a clip the other day of an A Current Affair story on Mark Carroll who is showing signs of CTE.
It’s why the game is so heavily watered down these days. The NRL are doing everything they can to reduce the amount of heavy contact. Especially from set starts like kick offs and drop outs that require players getting up a full head of steam and running into brick walls. They’re now talking about removing kick offs or just giving sides incentives for going short. Not to mention how strict they are on head contact. Imo the game sucks these days. It’s not the game I watched growing up, and hasn’t been for about 10 years. But at the same time I can understand why. They don’t want to be raked over the coals in 20-30 years by ex players who are suffering CTE. The NFL already experienced that.
Insiders have long known all is not what it seems inside the landmark NFL concussion settlement. A new report paints a picture of what reality is for former players.
www.forbes.com
In short, in this day and age, with everything we know about head trauma, the old days of players toughing it out are gone. Not too long I watched the 2002 Prelim between the Roosters and Broncos (a game I attended interestingly enough), and in the very first tackle of the game, Roosters hooker Simon Bonetti go KO’d. In today’s game, it would be a Cat 1, 10 day mandatory stand down. Back then, although he never came back on, for about 20 mins the commentators were speculating on him returning and showing him sitting on the bench. I’ve often mentioned how there is a big difference between racism and drugs these days, compared to 20 years ago. Back then, racism wasn’t a big deal, yet they would throw the book at you for drugs. See Bryan Fletcher and Craig Field and Kevin McGuiness as examples. These days it’s the reverse. They will throw the book at you for racism, and turn the other way with drugs. But it’s also the way head injuries are now viewed. It’s almost like they didn’t give a shit back then. And not just the NRL, society in general. There wasn’t the awareness of just how fatal the long term affects were. But now there is and they don’t want to be sued out of the arse. Hence why the game is frustrating to watch these days. We live in a far different world in 2024 compared to 2004.