LIAM DEL CARME | ‘I was there, but I can’t remember it at all’

News in England this week emerged of potential class action against rugby authorities for their failure to adequately protect players from concussion-related illnesses.

A group of players, led by Rugby World Cup (RWC) 2003 winner Steve Thompson, is seeking recourse for medical conditions its members say they developed, but were never warned about, while they were playing the game.

The 42-year-old Thompson has been diagnosed with early onset dementia and probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy. “It’s the rugby that’s put me through this,” he told The Guardian.

Thompson, who says he is just seeking a normal life, cannot remember playing in England’s triumphant march to the trophy that year.

“And it was as if I was watching England play now. Except I was there. But I can’t remember at all being there. Honestly, I don’t know scores from any of the games.”

Thompson is one of a growing number of players, active just after the game turned professional, who have developed medical conditions related to concussion.

While the game almost hastily turned professional in the mid-1990s, the on-field action wasn’t always aligned with what happened off it. Players who then had to commit to full-time training regimes became fitter and stronger, but the impact of continued high-velocity collisions wasn’t recognised or understood by the game’s gatekeepers.

“It was like, ‘So what do we do now then?’,” said Thompson. “It felt like the coaches were thinking, ‘We’ll just knock the hell out of each other. That’s what we’ll do.’ And we did.

It was worse when he got called up to play for England. “It was so brutal during the week that you’d come home on the Thursday for your day off and I’d just be like, ‘I don’t think I can play, I feel utterly battered’.”

According to Sport Concussion South Africa, in the US, up to 1,2 million concussions occur in contact and collision sports per year. In SA, rugby has the highest incidence of concussion among collision team sports.

Concussion hasn’t always been treated as seriously as it is now.

In the first decade after rugby turned professional, coaches didn’t give a second thought to selecting a player who had sustained a head knock in the previous game.

The professional game has taught coaches to win at all cost. Players were treated like cattle, with a number affixed to them.

Because the effects of concussion aren’t always visually apparent, it has often been “treated” as if it doesn’t exist. There are times, however, when even the most horrifying visual signs are ignored. The unedifying sight in 2014 of much-celebrated former Toulouse coach Guy Noves charging into the change room to summon his star, but groggy centre Florian Fritz back to the field springs to mind. Fritz had earlier copped a huge blow to the head, collapsed, was helped to his feet and left the field dazed and confused, with blood dripping from his temple. His being allowed back onto the field borders on criminal negligence.

When players are concussed they are now closely monitored for symptoms that include headaches, nausea, dizziness, ringing in the ears, sleep disturbances, drowsiness, sensitivity to light, sensitivity to noise, blurred or partial loss of vision and even sadness.

According to Sport Concussion South Africa, in the US, up to 1,2 million concussions occur in contact and collision sports per year. In SA, rugby has the highest incidence of concussion among collision team sports. Ten to 15% of high school rugby players will suffer a concussion in any season. Up to 50% of them will have suffered a concussion in their high school playing careers.

SA has no known cases of dementia as a result of the sport.

Globally the game has done much to clean up its act. Laws have been changed, stringent protocols have been put in place and players are sent for mandatory head injury assessments (HIA) when they have taken a blow to the head.

It was not so when Thompson and co played. The lingering question that generation afflicted by dementia can now pose is whether authorities then turned a blind eye to the dangers of concussion.

If they can prove that, they too could receive compensation, as is the case in the near billion-dollar payout the NFL has committed to its former stars.

Some, like Thompson, however, would prefer a full memory bank.