Amateur players launch lawsuit against rugby authorities over brain injuries | Concussion in sport

Rugby union authorities in England and Wales are facing a second major lawsuit as a group of more than 55 former amateur players have begun legal action against the Rugby Football Union, the Welsh Rugby Union and World Rugby, who they accuse of negligence in their failure to protect them from brain injuries during their playing careers.

The group includes retired female internationals, elite players from the amateur era, former youth players, and the family of one deceased male player who was diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) postmortem.

The action is separate to the case involving a group of 225 former professional union players, which is already under way. The law firm Rylands Garth is organising both and has submitted Letters of Claim on behalf of the amateurs this week, to begin the pre-action phase of the lawsuit. Like the professional cohort, the amateurs have been diagnosed with a range a neurological impairments, including early-onset dementia, probable CTE, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and motor neurone disease, which they attribute to the effects of the concussive and sub-concussive blows they suffered while playing the sport.

Whereas the professional group are all men who played from 1995 onwards, the amateurs are more diverse. “It doesn’t matter what level of the game you played or are playing at, whether it’s at school or adult rugby, and as a professional or amateur, male or female, we are sadly seeing the same alarming neurological impairments at all levels of the game,” said Richard Boardman, a partner at Rylands Garth.

Boardman said the legal team have seen the same symptoms over and again: “chronic depression, aggression and violence, significant memory loss, incontinence, drug and alcohol addiction, and in some cases, failed suicide attempts”.

The players allege that among other failings the authorities failed to ensure that they each had an adequate, symptom-free, break from the game after suffering brain injuries, or that they were subject to proper medical examination before returning to play. They also argue that the authorities failed to follow expert medical advice available to them at the time about the risks of brain injury, and that they specifically failed to institute adequate research by credible independent experts into the greater vulnerability of the female players to brain damage.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, one of the amateur players involved in the lawsuit, a Labour councillor, Alex Abbey, explained that he had been diagnosed with CTE in 2015. Abbey, 48, was forced to quit his job as a teacher when he was 31 because he started suffering blackouts during lessons. He was a promising player in his teens, when he had trials for the North of England. He estimates that he played around 80 rugby games a season, across both codes, between the ages of 13 and 18, many of them against adults. He says he suffered at least 18 major concussions during his career and that he would invariably play on afterwards.

“When you got knocked out, they picked you up and poured a bucket of water on your head, or put a cold sponge down your back, and you woke up, and if you could walk in a straight line you carried on playing, and if you couldn’t walk in a straight line they took you to the sideline until you could.”

Abbey described it as like “the wild west”. He believes it was the sheer volume of blows to the head he suffered that caused his disease. Abbey believes rugby union at the junior level is safer now after changes made to the game in the last few years, but says he still would not want any of his three children to play the game.

The amateur group joined with the professionals in calling for immediate changes to the sport to make it safer, including a mandatory limit on contact in training, reducing non-injury substitutions, the introduction of a more effective pitchside diagnostic tool, setting up a brain injuries passport and extending the return to play period after concussion to 28 days. “At some point they’ve got to listen,” Abbey said, “and if it takes them being taken to court, that’s what it takes.”

In a joint statement, the RFU, WRU and World Rugby said: “Rugby is a sport that provides many lifelong health and wellbeing benefits for participants at every level. It is loved by millions of current and former players around the globe.

“We care deeply about every member of the rugby family and have been saddened by the brave personal accounts of former players who are struggling with any health issues. We want them know that we care, we listen, and we never stand still when it comes to rugby being the most progressive sport on player welfare.

“Acting on the latest science, evidence and independent expert guidance, we constantly strive to safeguard and support all our players – future, current, and former. Rugby is a leader in the prevention, management and identification of head impacts and we proactively fund transformational research, embrace innovation and explore technology that can make the sport as accessible, inclusive and safe as possible for all participants.”