According to doctors and other erudite people school children should not play contact rugby because of the injuries which can be sustained, such as concussion, torn ligaments, disclocations, etc. Really?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35696238

Head protection can be worn to reduce the chances of concussion. I thought the idea of contact sports like rugby, football, etc was to encourage kids to develop physically and learn some life skills.

We might as well just sit them in a classroom and let them play with their Nintendos.

As we are building houses on all the playing fields its a bit irrelevant

And why is 'nanny state' in the thread title? This is not a state initiative, and given the public school background of most of our current crop of 'leaders' it is very unlikely to ever become one. It's some Doctors who have reviewed the evidence and put forward a considered clinical view. It may be unpopular, and it may seem unnecessarily intrusive to some, but it's not the state and it's not nannying,

John

This is why we then get beaten in most sports lol

Although in regards to wearing helmets to prevent concussion there is new evidence stating that helmets make no difference as it's to do with the brain moving around inside the skull (or something like that).

There is an on going scandal in American football, with its oversized protective gear, over the cover up of concussion injuries and long term effects on famous players over the years. I believe Will Smith is even making a movie about it.

Where are the statistics on school rugby injuries and concussions?

We can conduct a risk assessment based on that data.


Note: just as an aside, in the late 1960s a school mate of mine was paralysed (waist down) playing rugby - it wasn't through a tackle, his neck/back struck the base of a goal post.

Sometime later goal post pads were introduced.

Is it me being way off the mark, but how do you risk assess it, ok not taking into account PPE, as one poster has said that they may cause injuries, boxing is removing the need for helmets.

S we have people running at high speed, high tackles are banned but still happen, I gather they were banned for a reason, tell me how you stop injuries because my opinion is you can't no matter what control measures you put in the injury will still happen, I think people are kidding themselves that everything can be risk assessed and once that happens injuries are reduced.

John, sorry I wasn't having a go a particular point made, I was just making an observation and maybe my own view that not everything can be risk assessed and control measures to reduce injury. I personally think that we as practitioners often produce R/A's that have no value. Me included.

Sorry, everything can be risk assessed!

If were going to analyse this we should look at the source report, it states:

"More than 70 doctors and academics are calling for a ban on tackling in rugby matches played in UK and Irish schools." - That's not many. Not sure how many academics, but I'm sure I'm right in saying there are around 12,000 doctors in the UK. So why the massive coverage from the BBC?

"One of the signatories of the open letter is Prof Allyson Pollock, from Queen Mary University of London, who has long campaigned about the dangers of rugby.
She said evidence collected over 12 years showed rugby players up to the age of 18 or 19 had a 28% chance of getting injured over a season of 15 matches".

Is anyone here who's ever watched Rugby surprised by this figure? Like the last post suggested this happens in other sports too. Whats the ratio in Football or hockey for instance?

It's hardly surprising that youngsters get injured playing rugby - it's a contact sport. What really needs to be assessed is the benefits in terms of a sport, social utility and fitness aspect of the game. There is a risk of injury in all sports and not just rugby. Like all risks they need to be managed in order to reduce injuries to ALARP. Banning contact rugby seems the soft option to me.

I wouldn't ban sports and games at school either; I just don't share the average man's obsession with balls,

John

This afternoon I went on a clinic appointment with my daughter to the Orthotist.

He was delayed due to being called to A&E to attend an old chap who had a fall at home.

He fell forward and his head hit the dressing table and forced his head right back fracturing his top vertebrae. He called it the Hangman's fracture, usually a killer.

He wasn't wearing any head protection.

Accidents happen.

For schools the HSE aren't too keen on reporting school accidents under RIDDOR so I wonder what their data suggests in that environment?

Safety as we keep repeating is not about no it's about manageing risk - good coaches and teachers with good student discipline - a core to the Rugby ethic and culture.

If only Volenti fit injuria extended to children; or does it?

Spot on, that I would suggest is the experience for most kids.

When looked at logically, the ethos of some sports does seem curious and almost bound to cause injury, rugby and boxing being prime examples, and yet society accepts them.

If we did indeed sit down and risk assess many things as if they had just been devised, I suspect we would have to recommend against an awful lot of things.

Take driving. If we were now proposing this and the methodology we use, would we accept it? We would be proposing that people get some basic instruction on driving a car, pass a half hour test, and then they're let loose on the roads. We would be proposing that roads would consist of traffic passing each other in opposite directions at a combined speed of anything up to 120 mph, with in most cases no physical separation between them. We would be proposing that the fuel that vehicles run on is a highly flammable liquid, stored in considerable quantity on the car, and people put this fuel into their cars themselves at filling stations with no training whatsoever, no effective safety zones etc. If we consider other forms of transport, it gets even worse. In the case of motorcycles, to overcome the problem of where to put this supply of highly flammable liquid, we will stick it between the rider's legs.

We accept a lot of things as part of the life and society that has developed over centuries. Perhaps we do need to take a fresh look at some things in the light of modern knowledge and incidence of injury.

I hope you have a fire assessment!

Interesting.

Put this into the context of our profession and a moral context.

Adults have more choices than children (boys and girls play rugby at school). Adults can decide whether or not to participate, children can't.

In the workplace, we limit what children and under 18s can do due to the additional risk they are at from lack of physical development (MSDs are more readily caused and harder to recover from), they are not allowed to carry out heavy manual handling due to increased risk of injury and they are deemed more susceptible to chemical and noise hazards. So would you think it was OK to have an activity like full contact rugby in these circumstances?

I think you know the answer to that.

Red Herrings and irrelevant posts about getting wet or the inability of a national team to compete, or one off injuries should not cloud our judgement.

If you want exercise and to gain a sense of responsibility, get a pet!

The Will Smith movie has already been mentioned and has been in the news lately.

In American Football the players wear helmets (and lots of padding because they are just big girls) and have been experiencing concussions and longer term damage.

The thought now is that this could be due to the fact that they wear the helmets - the helmets give them a false sense of safety and they bash heads harder. The brain however is still shaken around in the skull causing injury.

Not the same as rugby I know but I found the point interesting.

Interesting.
Seems rugby is less safe than soccer.
What a surprise.
Seems rugby is at the top of the list:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih....df/brjsmed00012-0019.pdf

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