The long running conversation around the blight of contact sport is in sharp focus. Photo / Getty Images.
The long running conversation around the blight of contact sport is in sharp focus. Photo / Getty Images.
OPINION:
Contact sport is dangerous. If it doesn't pose an immediate threat to your health, the long term ramifications will probably get you. So do you cease to engage or weigh up the possibilities and plow ahead?
The long running conversation around the blight of contact sport is in sharpfocus. Several former players have banded together to present legal action around the games attitude and action over the sleeping menace that is chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE for short.
The stories around this previously unknown, or worse, ignored condition are heart-breaking. No-one deserves to suffer long term mental trauma as a result of playing a game with their mates over the weekend. The noise is predominantly around professional athletes, but the legions of weekend warriors on which rugby is based, it's life blood if you will, is of deep concern.
However the legal action will seek to further entrench the need for transparency when dealing with injuries, and for current and future players to be fully educated on the long-term risks of head injuries."
As in most walks of life, information is power. But will the free release of such, send contact sport into a spiralling free fall?
For organised collision sport, this current discussion could signal finality for all games which fall under that banner.
I think we all can empathise with people who are reluctant to point themselves or their children in the direction of such sport. Player numbers will reduce unless steps are taken to severely mitigate the potential damage that has been unknown or dramatically downplayed. But will that manifest itself in changing the very heart of code, a game of physical dominance?
It may well do, so is this the beginning of the end for our national game? I would like to think not. Without the extreme and constant physical exchanges, rugby and league cease to exist as we know and love them. Are we now, like in the hugely popular and globally dominant fight sport industry, standing in the shadow of caveat emptor? There is no grey area around the potential for grey matter damage in boxing and MMA, yet the sports appear to be going from strength to strength.
If there is money to be made, or fun to be had, people will go to extraordinary lengths to be involved. This doesn't make it right, but human existence is littered with the wreckage of people who evaluate and take on risk, even if the potential result is destructive.
The key here is knowledge. Athletes of days gone by who were blissfully unaware of CTE, (especially if it is ruled that the governing bodies knew, but failed to act) will keenly anticipate the result of these class actions and associated compensation. For future generations knowledge is King. Yes, attempt to soften the blow, but to wildly reconstruct the game to completely eradicate the tyranny of CTE would destroy the very essence of the sport.
Players have a right to know, sport has a moral obligation to inform and the decision to take on risk lies entirely with the individual.
