Anyone get their child out of playing rugby? (head injury concern)

[BarqsHasBite]

Just that really - am determined that when my son moves to secondary (we are hoping to send him to an independent school) that he does not play any contact rugby, or head the ball in football though that’s less of an issue as he can just not head when he’s playing.

Has anyone tried to get their child out of playing rugby for the same reason? I’m sure someone told me that some schools have it in the parental contract that the boys will play rugby and it’s a condition of accepting a place at the school 😱

If I get pushback am hoping to find a neurologist to advise against playing rugby - is the school really going to insist on going against medical advice?
But interested to know if anyone has any experience of this.

My next door neighbour’s 12 year old has had tinnitus since a head injury incurred at a rugby match a year ago. Drives him mad.

Our friend stopped playing rugby so he wouldn't be injured for the cricket season.
Within 2 weeks he was out of cricket for a month due to a cricket injury.
Kids get injured playing all sports. Where do you draw the line?
Do you have a trampoline...??? These are one if the list dangerous things out there. Both my kids play rugby (boy and girl) but my DH refused a trampoline in the garden.

Was that in Cambridge? I thought he had a heart attack while on the pitch? Tragic, but rugby related?

My DS couldn’t play for medical reasons and he never got bullied. One of his friends always scheduled his music lessons to clash with rugby practice.

Entirely agree with you. lots of schools have moved away from making it compulsory. Make sure he's good at another sport to do instead!

You will not be “that parent” for asking, and you may well find that it is only touch rugby in year 7 etc, and you can get comfortable with that.

I don’t see what good a private neurologist would do you, if there is nothing specifically wrong with your son that makes him more vulnerable to head injury? All they could write is that rugby has risks of head injury and the parents wish to avoid this. Couldn’t you write that instead?

In Wisbech Cambridgeshire. I’m not sure exactly - I’ve heard he went into cardiac arrest after being tackled, so unclear at the moment.

*@chickenpieandchips ·

Our friend stopped playing rugby so he wouldn't be injured for the cricket season.
Within 2 weeks he was out of cricket for a month due to a cricket injury.*

Was that a head injury from cricket? If you read the op's post again you will see she specifically talks about head injuries.

My personal experience with a club rugby playing child who's been playing contact for several seasons now, is that there's never been so much as an ambulance called across all the kids age groups, let alone air ambulance.

I think this is fairly unusual. Both my DSs played rugby at club and school (1st team) from 6 to 18. It was scary. They had one broken arm and a bad concussion between them and I saw a couple of broken legs and a few ambulances over the years - there was always a paramedic car at the school matches.

Yes, it is a rough game. I think you can avoid it by being shit and not trying and thus always being in the bottom group at school.

I think the brain damage/dementia is from the regularity that professional players get hit. I also think that there are for more checks in place now. There were very clear concussion guidelines put in place during my DSs' playing years and it got even more strict over the years. There is more care in place now.

Lots of sports are dangerous and rugby does look brutal. In fact I said this to DS1 only yesterday whilst he was watching the England v Fiji game. He pointed out that there are strict rules with sanctions for safety reasons and it actually looks worse than it is as it isn't the free for all it appears to be.

I kicked up hell when my son was in primary school and an outside group (council approved) were brought in to do a once a week 12 week block of rugby. I was a parent helper at the time and it wasn’t touch rugby it was full contact. So many of the kids were scared of having to basically run into each other (that’s how injuries happen) no mouth guards, no allowances made if you were small and didn’t want to run into a much bigger child who wasn’t going to get hurt. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing… I’d love to have seen the teachers forced to do that! Anyway, I phoned the head of education in the area and kicked up hell, turns out she was completely unaware of the fact that it wasn’t ‘touch’ rugby they were playing and it was changed to touch after that. I don’t care if it pissed anyone off at all… if you want your child to play full contact rugby or your child does… on you go, join a club, do an after school club, but no way on earth is it ok for a full contact sport to be mandatory. My son is a musician, wasn’t having it. Had a boy fracture his collar bone in my friends son’s school playing mandatory rugby that he didn’t want to play. It’s unacceptable. And before anyone says, yes you can get injuries playing any sport, but not all sports require that level of extreme physical contact. I’ll never forget watching those kids genuinely terrified at having to run into each other, there was obviously the group of kids who were loving it (the much bigger, more boisterous ones) and good for them, rugby could have been a great fit for them as a sport , but not for the others. Teachers were oblivious to how upset the kids were, I was very disappointed that they sat back like that, I couldn’t. Rugby shouldn’t be mandatory to anyone! Boxing isn’t!

No way will DC play rugby. I know two cases (not close, but friends of friends) where teenagers were seriously injured. Ridiculous it is still played in schools, particularly when there are alternative versions. Can your son do music or swimming lessons during that time - another expense, but worthwhile: https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/tackle-and-scrum-should-be-banned-in-school-rugby-argue-expert/

It was more than irony. The OP could do all she can to get her son out of rugby and then he'll have a fall in the playground or something the next week. Where do you stop. As someone says earlier we are mostly all happy to drive a car.
As for concussion now there are very strict protocols in place. It's generally not the first hit, it's a hit on a hit that causes a problem.
And mouthguards should always be worn in contact rugby.
Both my kids love rugby. We've had broken bones, concussions, but the joy they've got from it both on and off the pitch makes up for the small risk of anything long term happening.

The key facts are:

1. Rugby injuries are more common among school-age players than in adults.
2. Concussion is the most common injury
3. Studies have found a "high rate of severe injury"; one source states the risk of serious injury is around 17% per season played.
4. there have been numerous cases of death and life-changing injury, including catastrophic spinal injuries, in school rugby (evidence below).
5. At least 70 medical experts in the UK have called for contact rugby in schools to be banned. The experts included those running the spinal units treating the injuries.
6. Employees of World Rugby and other Rugby professional organisations have waged a misinformation campaign to muddy the waters, in much the same way that employees of big tobacco did in earlier decades.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/02/uk-health-experts-call-for-ban-on-tackling-in-school-rugby

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/school-rugby-forwards-shoulder-the-most-injuries-98dvkn7hg

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/dec/13/death-of-a-schoolboy-ben-robinson-concussion-rugby-union

https://www.rugbypass.com/news/south-african-schoolboy-player-dies-following-head-injury/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6027683/Boy-15-suffers-spinal-injury-Brisbanes-elite-Nudgee-College.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5981939/Son-footy-player-rushed-hospital-spinal-surgery-scrum-collapse-rugby-match.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-35636594

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/2023/01/26/report-finds-concussion-most-common-injury-in-ail-and-schoolboy-senior-cup/

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/51/15/1113?ijkey=de88a9930a4d70366216bd8c02fab1c13b0fc3ab&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tackling-Rugby-Allyson-M-Pollock/dp/1781686025

My son is in the rugby team despite dislocating his collar bone last year.. why? Because he loves it

Rules have changed this year a lot though so it's safer

Im worried about this when my DS follows his sister to independent school next year. One of the firth formers got a head injury last week in rugby and went briefly blind! I was shocked but the rugby mums seems to take this in their stride. There’s boys in A&E every week after matches.

Thank you @Londonlondon4 and @EctopicSpleen for that helpful information which I will save to raise with the school if needed. I think it is worth reposting the BMJ summary, particularly for those saying rugby is no more risky than other football/cricket/driving a car etc

Tackle and scrum should be banned in school rugby, argue expert
Tackle and scrum should be banned in school rugby, argue experts in The BMJ today.Allyson Pollock and Graham Kirkwood at Newcastle University, say the evidence shows that collision sports, such as youth rugby, carry high rates of injury – and they call on the government to “put the interests of the child before the interests of corporate professional rugby unions” and remove the tackle and other forms of harmful contact from the school game.Rugby union and rugby league are the most commonly played collision sports in the physical education curriculum of schools in England.A recent evidence review of youth sports found that rugby, ice-hockey and American football had the highest concussion rates in children. Other studies show that rugby related injury emergency department attendances in the US are on the rise, in particular head and face injuries, which make up more than a third of injuries.Head injury is associated with an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, say the authors, adding to existing evidence that head injury may lead to neurodegenerative diseases, for example Parkinson’s disease.Furthermore, a history of concussion is associated with a lowering of a person’s life chances across a range of social and educational measures, as well as an increase in violent behaviour and violent injury in adolescents.Rule changes in collision sports can make a difference, they write. For example, Canada’s ban on ‘body-checking’ (intentional body contact) in under 13s ice-hockey led to a reduction in concussion risk.However, they point out that evidence for other strategies to reduce concussion risk in sport including the wearing of protective equipment such as mouthguards is weak. And in the UK, teacher training in the skills of rugby are lacking as is concussion awareness training.In July 2016 the four UK chief medical officers (CMOs) rejected the call for a ban on tackling in youth rugby, citing a report which claimed rugby was no more injury prone than other sports.But Pollock and Kirkwood argue that, under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 19), “governments have a duty to protect children from risks of injury and to ensure the safety of children, which is why we are calling on CMOs to act now.”

Also, the fact that strict concussion protocols have been introduced makes me more alarmed rather than less! It sounds like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, and just highlights how dangerous rugby is.

My son goes to a very traditional and long-standing rugby school and there is zero pressure there to play full contact. Lots of other options (including sevens, tag and other sports) and never any need to explain reasoning for it. You won’t be the first to ask so the school will probably have options available that don’t need any sort of medical justification etc. Just have a chat with the school and take from there

Do broken bones not bother you then?
One of my first assignments as AHP was working in a head injury unit I'll never forget the 14 year old whose life changed for ever because of a bloody rugby match, imagine having a child doing well academically being left with life long injuries meaning he'll never walk, talk or eat independently again. None of my medical colleagues support contact rugby as a game for under 16s, and two of the neurologists I worked with wanted it banned altogether.
Tag rugby is a much safer alternative, and the kids get to learn the rules of the game, without the risk of significant injury. Of course any sport has a slight risk to it, but rugby is high risk.
Ds's school don't play contact rugby, I think most state schools don't anymore as they're worried about litigation, or maybe they just care more about the kids in their charge?
Ask most medics and I think you'll find the vast majority would be against contact rugby.
Also we know statistically that young male drivers are at the greatest risk of injuries or death, why do you think the insurance is so high for this group? Unfortunately driving tends to be a necessity. It's ridiculous to try and defend rugby by saying "what about getting in a car".
I say this as an All Blacks supporter, but post 16, not younger and at that age the young person can make an informed decision and way up the risks.

DH coaches rugby and has always said its inexperienced players you need to be wary of. Playing with people who don't want to play does seem an extra danger.

One of my DDs plays for a club. The other hates the idea of it although enjoyed tag at primary school. It should be a choice for Contact (and not just in rugby!) and make sure everyone knows what they are doing.

I don't think that contact rugby should be played in school except for those that want to play it. Teenagers who are not into the sport are not going to learn to play it properly or pay enough attention, increasing the risk of injury. My DS hated it due to the aggressive nature of it, although was quite happy to do any other sport for PE.

I gave him a note every week during rugby term. As an adult you shouldn't be forced into unwanted, aggressive, physical contact from another person so I'm not sure why it's an acceptable part of school PE lessons.

Sorry just realised my post makes it sound like non academic kids don't matter, of course they do, I've previously mentioned on other threads my kids aren't academics. I should have said "imagine having a fit healthy 14 year old". Sorry again no offence meant. I'm just against rugby for under 16s....and I can't edit on the app.

Also worth comparing:

https://www.aans.org/en/Patients/Neurosurgical-Conditions-and-Treatments/Concussion
"the likelihood of suffering a concussion while playing a contact sport is estimated to be as high as 19% per year of play; in other words, almost all athletes of contact sports suffer from a concussion within five years of participation. It has been reported that more than 62,000 concussions are sustained each year in [US] high school contact sports"
and
"there is no such thing as a minor concussion"

with:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/aug/02/matter-of-life-and-death-brain-injuries-claim-heading-for-court-rugby-league
125 rugby players have "been diagnosed with conditions including early onset dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)"
" the sport did not take proper action to protect rugby league players from injuries caused by repetitive concussive and sub-concussive blows during games"
"No one signed up for permanent, progressive brain damage."

I have a handful fairly well known (if you're very into rugby) pro and semi pro rugby players in my extended family. All of them are completely adamant that their children won't ever play.

We live in a town that fields one of the strongest teams in our local league. Rugby is everything here. Our house overlooks the pitch. Last winter a young teenager laid on the freezing ground for five hours waiting for an ambulance. I went out to offer anything that would help and will never forget the horrible stillness and silence. I’ve also seen (and heard) a player knocked unconscious after cracking heads with another player and watched the air ambulance land for a player with a broken leg. I’m always quite shocked at how rough it is. DS will not be playing.