Montana Journalism Abroad

Rugby and football clubs at all levels work to rein in concussions

EDINBURGH, U.K.–Luke Oliver remembers playing rugby at a time when concussions weren’t taken seriously, if they were acknowledged at all.

“That was just how things were,” says Oliver, who now works at a rugby store in Edinburgh. “A knock to the head wasn’t something that kept you off the field, it was something you shook off. Players would go down, maybe see stars for a second, and then get up and keep playing like nothing happened.”

Then, about 10 years ago, the sport started trying to address the number of head injuries affecting players. 

“They started to introduce stand-down periods. If you got a head knock, even if it wasn’t judged as a bad one, you had to sit out for three weeks,” Oliver recalls.

For years, head injuries in sports like rugby and soccer were just part of the game in Scotland and in many European countries. But that is changing. In Scotland, coaches, researchers and parents are pushing for changes that make the games safer, especially for younger players. By lowering tackle height in rugby or banning headers in youth football (or soccer in the U.S.), the goal isn’t to take the contact out of sports, but to make sure people can keep playing without putting their long-term health on the line.

In rugby, this effort has led to new rules being tested in Scottish community rugby. Organizers have implemented rules that lower the maximum legal height of a tackle from the shoulder to the base of the sternum. The hope was that it would reduce more dangerous collisions where players hit their heads together.

A new study from the University of Edinburgh compared 60 games from before and after the new rule took effect. What researchers found was a shift: Tacklers were more likely to bend at the waist and make initial contact with the lower torso or arms. That meant head-to-head hits dropped 45% from the previous season.

Debbie Palmer of the Institute for Sport, Physical Education and Health Sciences at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, and co-director for the UK Collaborating Centre on Injury and Illness Prevention in Sport IOC Research Centre, says the drop in the results was promising. It’s Palmer’s position that the rule change and the findings will allow more people to play the sport safely.

“As a collision sport, head injuries in rugby are a reality and, in an effort to protect players, this is one of the biggest law changes the community game has seen in recent years. These initial results are very encouraging,” Palmer, who has done a decade of work in this area, says in a release.

This doesn’t mean there are fewer hits. In fact, the overall number of head contacts went up. But those hits were less dangerous. Head-to-head collisions went down, while less risky head-to-thigh contact went up. The study suggests that lowering the legal tackle height successfully changed player behavior, pushing contact zones lower on the body.

Scottish Rugby, the national organization for professional and recreational leagues, hailed the research and its lead author, Hamish Gornall.

“Hamish’s research clearly demonstrates that player behaviors have changed, reducing head-to-head and head-to-shoulder contacts, which should lead to reduced numbers of concussions in our players,” says David Pugh, Scottish Rugby’s chief medical officer.

Protecting the Youngest Players

While rugby is known for its rough tackling, even sports where contact is more accidental are taking steps to keep players safe.

Jill Byrne has seen those changes firsthand. Byrne was recently standing on the sidelines at her son Matthew’s football game, where he plays for Salvesen, a Division IIII development team made up of 13- and 14-year-olds.

“They’re running at high speed,” she says. “As they get older, it gets more competitive, and there’s definitely potential for head injuries.”

To try and address this, developmental leagues like Matthew’s implemented one simple rule: no heading the ball.

Still, the risk of injury does worry Byrne. She says she knows it’s a physical sport, and while the new rules help, the concern is always in the back of her mind. At the same time, she tries to balance that worry with the positives — her kids are outside, active and social. 

“You weigh the risk of something like a head injury against the fact that they’re running around, having fun, and being part of a team,” she said.

Still, she admits her boys aren’t completely avoiding headers. 

“The boys and their dad play something called head tennis,” she laughs. “It’s basically tennis with lots of headers. We’re kind of running with risk, but sometimes life is full of risks and you’ve got to take some of them and enjoy them, too.”

Last October, the Scottish Football Association issued new guidelines to reduce the risk of concussions across all levels of the sport. 

When they were released, the top medical official in Scotland, Sir Gregor Smith, summed up the findings by saying, “The message remains the same: All concussions are serious — if in doubt, sit them out.”

Back on the pitch in Edinburgh, Byrne’s youngest son has stayed clear of head injuries. “We’ve had broken ankles, strained ligaments, those kinds of things, but nothing to the head,” she says and pauses before adding, “luckily.”

Over at the Rugby Stuff stuff, Oliver remembers how some of his teammates just kept getting concussions, again and again. There wasn’t much to stop it from happening, and not a lot of conversation around what those hits might mean long-term.

That, he hopes, is squarely in the past.

“I think it was a good change,” Oliver says. “These days, you see a lot of older players getting Alzheimers or dementia, and people are starting to get more aware.”

This story is part of a healthcare series produced by the International Reporting program at the University of Montana School of Journalism. Read more from this Scotland-based project, as well as reports from other countries, at Montana Journalism Abroad.