Best of 2022: Simon Shaw on why rugby must act on concussion
In June of this year, City PM spoke to former England rugby player Simon Shaw about his experiences with concussion and what tech can do to change the game. Article originally published on 15 June 2022.
It was a project hatched over a pre-arranged dinner, but the cogs that were left turning once the bill had been settled have spearheaded innovation into understanding concussion in and out of sport, and provoked questions as to why it continues to take so long to implement change.
Simon Shaw is a former Wasps rugby player – representing the club 355 times. A 71-cap England lock and British and Irish Lions representative, the now 48-year-old met with now chairman of Love of the Game Laurence Geller and left with more questions than answers.
“He said: ‘What do you think about concussion?’ and I said I don’t know,” Shaw told City PM “I didn’t have the statistics to possibly comment but I did have disagreements with some of the rule changes that have taken place over recent years and the tackle height rule.
She’ll kill me for this but my wife is happy for our kids to hurtle down a mountain at 70 miles per hour skiing but doesn’t necessarily want them to play rugby.
Simon Shaw on concussion risk
“If you use bad technique, you’re likely to get a concussion. The whole point of coaching people from an early age is to do the skill well but to avoid injuries.
“We agreed that we should be doing more. As lovers of the sport and, certainly from my perspective, promoters of this sport, why am I not doing more to actively mitigate the chances of concussion to injuries as a whole?”
Rugby has improved dramatically in its handling of concussion with pitch-side specialists and more detailed protocols in place, but common themes remain.
Missed and addressed
Concussions continue to be missed or addressed, players may suffer a concussion and not even know about it, and the roll call of former players with dementia or cognitive issues as a result of their playing years increases annually. So are parents stopping their children from playing rugby?
“It’s obvious [that cognitive fears influence parents]. I go around a lot of rugby clubs, it’s happening,” Shaw added. “It’s also happening within my own circles.
“My wife is very, very reluctant for our kids [19, 17, 16 and 12] to play rugby. But I think she’s – and there’s no judgement – clouded by the hysteria around it.
“She’ll kill me for this but my wife is happy for our kids to hurtle down a mountain at 70 miles per hour skiing but doesn’t necessarily want them to play rugby.
“Part of my mission is to make the sport safer but to dull the flames of hysteria. We don’t know enough to say concussion is going to be catastrophic for everyone who plays the game. It’s not.
“Case and point, I played it for 20-odd years and I don’t believe that I have major issues to do with cognitive function.
“Do we talk about this on a weekly basis in skiing? No, we don’t. Do we talk about it in horse riding? No we don’t. But they’re equally susceptible.”
So what is the solution? Well, non-for-profit campaign Love of the Game and their president, Shaw, have teamed up with a number of clubs across the English rugby pyramid to test technology surrounding concussion.
WAVi is an assessment tool which scans the brain to analyse various levels in the organ. Whether it is brain power, speed or reaction time, the sensors produce brain scans which can show differences from one scan to another.
Shaw starting from scratch
“You’ve got to start from scratch,” Shaw added. “What is a concussion? Because everyone believes they know what a concussion is because concussions are when you get knocked out.
“But we don’t know that, that’s just one way of detecting or spotting a concussion, there’s lots of other different types of concussion and different grades of concussion.
“Then we need to investigate how dangerous they are. Is it more dangerous to get a one off blow that knocks you out [because it’s visually a concussion] or multiple blows that don’t?
“We’re trying to investigate all of these things because information is the key to understanding this whole area. It’s so complicated.
“Laurence and I joke about how we’ve opened this box and in the first instance we’re trying to make the sport safer but you open the box and there’s so many areas we need to look at.”
In what is such an advanced world of medicine, technology and understanding, there appears to be so much more that’s left to understand around the world of brain injuries and sport’s impact on eventual cognitive function.
But sport has changed and continues to change, it’s simply a case of embracing the science and implementing what works, according to Shaw.
“Part of our objective is to try and get things implemented without this prolonged need for unnecessary research,” he said.
Back up data crucial
“I get it, everybody wants to be and we need to be correct – there needs to be data to back it up. If there is data from another country and it is validated then why aren’t we using it here?
“If it has benefited another country in another sport, why the hell not?
“There are other technologies that we’re looking at and trying to implement now that exist in Swedish ice hockey and Canadian ice hockey – they’re probably 10-15 years ahead of any other sport, and yet we do not use them.
“It’s been proven to benefit ice hockey players who have sustained a concussion and been brought back symptom free weeks earlier than they otherwise would have done so why aren’t we using it.
“I’m about the here and now, I’d love to change things right now. But you just have to overcome the hurdles of the powers that be or the red tape that prevents that from happening.”
Concussion continues to be an issue in sport, and it will never be stamped out due to the nature of competing at the very top.
But in technology and medical advancements, the Simon Shaws’ of the future may retire with more former teammates being able to remember their playing days. And if that can be achieved, why shouldn’t it be made a priority?