I watched a disturbing programme on BBC One last night, called Rugby on Trial. In it, the journalist Joe Crowley investigated the effects of head knocks in the sport. It was terrifying. At one stage, a doctor stood there holding what looked suspiciously like a human brain, which she then cut into two. My initial thought was, my God, I’ve got one of those floating about inside my skull. And it looks disgusting. Then, I thought, how glad I am that a) I didn’t play rugby and b) that I didn’t head a football much during my glory years in the public parks of Bristol.
Actually, I did play rugby union once, for my ‘house’ team at Brislington (Briz, as Bristolians call it) School. I managed to get through however long the game was without tackling anyone or being tackled, which explains why I was never asked to play again. Many of my friends did play and I have to say that I winced at the endless collisions that took place throughout. At the bottom of many a ruck, a young lad would emerge, blinking heavily, and it appeared, trying to work out what day it was. Football was my game.
My first experience of football was at Victory Park in Briz where the local team played. Perhaps because I was so young the players seemed ancient to me, and massive. The ball spent much of the time in the air, sometimes emerging from outer space it seemed and many a player would head the ball with incredible power. At half time, us kids would go on the pitch, one would cross the ball and another would try to head it. It was then I realised that heading the ball was not for me.
Assuming you could kick the ball in the air in the first place, heading the ball was awful. The first time I did, the lace caught me right on the forehead and I was seeing stars. Christ, that was heavy. Another time, I tried to head the ball and it hit the top of my head. How do these older blokes do it? Have they just got harder heads or am I just a total wuss?
By the time I was playing, balls were still heavy but not as heavy. Yet they still carried a right clout if you didn’t head it correctly. In fact, I was uncomfortable every time I headed the ball. I never really got over it. I left heading the ball to those who were good at it. Instead, I took all the corners on both sides of the pitch, perhaps subconsciously in order to avoid seeing stars again.
As well as watching local football, I watched the professional version, first high in the stands at Feyenoord in Rotterdam, Ashton Gate (Bristol City, I know, I know) and finally at Eastville, the home of Bristol Rovers. I marvelled at the skills of those players, not least at their ability to head a ball as it emerged from the night skies of Eastville, with half the floodlight bulbs not working, soaked in rain. It must have been like heading a medicine ball. In terms of the consequences of heading those balls, it probably was.
I’ll avoid using real names here for very obvious reasons but as the years went by I noted that as some of the old players I’d watched became unwell. Some seemed to slur, like a punchdrunk boxer, and I am aware of at least a couple who had to finish work early because they had become, in the vocabulary of the time, a little doolally. As a young man, I had no idea about things like dementia, even less so diseases like MND. I just saw some people become senile, whatever that was supposed to be.
Later, things were happening to numerous players I had watched, some in the professional era, too. Some were heroes. No one was putting 2+2 together. Then, in 2002, the footballer Jeff Astle died at the age of 59, four years after developing Alzheimer’s Disease. To quote the PFA website: “Twelve years later, in 2014, consultant neuropathologist, Dr Willie Stewart, examined Jeff’s brain and found Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a fatal brain disease associated with repeated head traumas that can also cause the development of dementia.”
In the years that followed, the links between brain injury and head trauma have become only too clear and in 2017 Alan Shearer made a BBC documentary on the subject which you can’t watch by clicking here. In the case of rugby, the whole situation has been taken to another level as over 200 ex players have taken out a class action against the rugby authorities who they allege failed to take reasonable action to protect players from permanent brain injuries caused by repetitive concussive and sub-concussive blows.
I am not an expert in brain trauma and can only acquire my opinions from actual experts as well as the evidence of my own eyes and having seen last night’s programme it is hard to believe that constant bangs to the head can have no detrimental effects to the brain. Anyone who has watched an interview with a boxer who has gone on too long will know the truth in that. The only argument in the legal case is whether the authorities were negligent.
The worst head trauma I ever suffered, apart from being attacked my my ex wife, was on the playing fields of Filwood Broadway, when I made a very late tackle on a player who otherwise would have had a clear run on our goal. When I say tackle, it was more of an assault, and the opposition player was so impressed he immediately got up and punched me in the back of the head. I was, unquestionably concussed for much of the rest of the game, finally coming round at the final whistle when the player I had “tackled” came up and, while shaking hands with me, said that this had been his first game back in action for two years after having his leg broken by a reckless late tackle and he “fucking wanted to kill (me) at the time.” Oh how we laughed, especially as neither of us were even booked.
The rugby players in last night’s show said they had been concussed and even knocked out on countless occasions and that head collision was simply part of the game. No one, it seems, thought, “Hmm. Hang on. This brain thing floats about inside your head and every time you get hit parts of it dies.” People do now.
All the participants in the programme said they did not want to destroy rugby, but to make it safer. Yet with modern day players being bigger, faster and fitter than ever, how can you do really do that? If some 20 stone bloke comes at you at full tilt and catches you even a glancing blow to the head, the odds are it won’t end well.
In the end, you can’t make anything totally safe. The best that we can do is to avoid the head getting battered in any activity, except boxing where of course the whole aim is to render the opponent unconscious. I remain grateful to have avoided playing rugby and to have avoided heading a football too often. I’ve long stopped wishing I’d been great at heading the ball.
