Head injury assessments shouldn't leave rugby supporters scratching their heads

SAFEGUARDING SPORT

- STAFF REPORTER

HEAD injury assessments should be taken seriously. Fans should understand that they are there to look after the players long after the final whistle has blown.

(AFP)

SOUTH Africans are still basking in the glow of the Springboks’ emphatic 43-10 dismantling of the All Blacks in the Rugby Championship. It was a win that restored pride, silenced doubters and reaffirmed South Africa’s place at the summit of world rugby.

Now the Springboks will host Argentina in Durban as Rassie Erasmus’s men look to defend their Rugby Championship crown in the coming weeks.

Yet in between the moments of brilliance, the crowd’s patience is often tested by those now-familiar stoppages for head injury assessments (HIAs). Supporters groan when a star player is led off, frustrated by the interruption. What many fail to realise is that those pauses are not trivial they are safeguards against tragedies that may unfold long after the final whistle.

Few have spent more time studying this balance of triumph and tragedy than Professor Hans de Ridder of North-West University (NWU). A leading researcher in sports science, he argues that concussions are not inconveniences but “traumatic brain injuries caused by biomechanical forces, often rotational accelerations, transmitted to the brain”. In rugby, football, hockey and boxing, he notes, “these forces are frequent and often celebrated as part of the game’s intensity”.