Laws of rugby ‘have to change’

AN ex-Ballina rugby player has warned that the rules of rugby must change to reduce the risk of concussion.
Dr David Brunker, who captained Ballina to a Connacht Junior League title in 2017, has called for a reduction in the number of players and for tackling above the waist to be outlawed.
Dr Brunker made his comments during an exclusive interview with The Mayo News on the topic of concussion.
A spotlight has recently been shone on the topic by several former internationals, including Steve Thompson and Ryan Jones, who have both developed early onset dementia.
Recent research has found that former professional rugby players are at much greater risk of dementia and Motor Neurone Disease (MND) than the general population.
World Rugby, the English Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Football Union are currently being sued by over 200 former amateur and professional players who have developed neurological diseases.
The ex-players are alleging that the governing bodies were negligent in failing to protect their brains during their careers.
Dr Brunker said that the increased size of amateur rugby players has raised the risk of concussion and is making the game ‘not sustainable’.
“Ultimately the game will have to change. 100 percent. The risk to CTE [Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy] and dementia and all these kind of neurological disorders – Parkinson’s – it’s there,” he said, citing research conducted on former professional American football players.
“Unless we change the rules to make it safer, it doesn’t matter how well coached you are, or how well clued the referees are. You can have a neurologist on the side-line, it won’t make a difference. It will make a difference, but it’s not a big enough difference. Because we are turning off too many people.”
Dr Brunker also called for greater enforcement of the IRFU’s amateur concussion protocol in junior rugby, which he described as ‘lawless’.
Under the current protocol, a player must be removed from play if experiencing any one of 22 symptoms.
A player must not return to contact training for at least 20 days and may only do so when directed by a medical professional.
“At junior level you can get away with anything. Absolutely anything,” Dr Brunker said.
“You’re at the mercy of the coach. And when teams want to win the coach doesn’t really care in some cases. I don’t want to lambast any coach I had, but if a player says he’s alright at junior level, he can get back on. It should be taken out of his hands.”
Dr Brunker, who works as a general practitioner and as a team doctor with Connacht and Ballina rugby teams, described proposals to ban scrums at underage as ‘nonsense’.
He added that failure to implement new rule changes would turn people away from the sport.
“You’ll have to change it slightly. You won’t continue to grow the sport with the way it is at the moment and the risk to head injuries.”
Read the full interview with Dr David Brunker in this week’s edition of The Mayo News.