Lifting The Lid On Rugby Players – US Boffins Want To Pick Their Brains
AN American University wants to pick the brains of Britain’s Rugby players. That is … take out and study the brain of Rugby players. It would like to examine the brain tissue of players who had head injuries and later die.
It has to be the Sports Story Scoop of the week …literally.
Left, a Kiwi Haka… rugby players with attitude
According to the Sunday Edition of The Scotsman an expert on sports-related head injuries wants the International Rugby Board to ask players who have serious head injuries on the field to donate their brains when they die.
It would be better if they had been laid out a few times in their career
A professor of neurosurgery at Boston University believes rugby players who have had concussions are at risk of becoming punch drunk – now called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). It is a kind of dementia
The Boston Brain Boffins have 100 brains of former US National Football League players who in later life experienced the clinical symptoms of CTE – memory loss, emotional instability, erratic behaviour and depression.
Those NFL players are fading violets they wear helmets. International Rugby players scorn such soft behaviour and go in head-on.
There are some who would say it’s all too little too late when you look at the performance of the UK Princess Royal’s son-in-law during the World Cup in New Zealand.
Mike Tindall’s wife -the former Zara Phillips flew out to calm the raging beast. It did not work and earlier this week he was kicked out of the England Squad and fined £25,000 for his off-field performance. The team was booted out (via not playing very well) and did not reach the final rounds.
Perhaps he could appeal on the grounds he was punch drunk and not roaring drunk.
The player has been given the kicking of his life by the sports chiefs. Mike Tindall’s England career has ended in disgrace. The 33 year-old former World Cup winner was booted out of the Elite Player Squad squad and fined after a Rugby Football Union investigation into his boozy night in a dwarf-themed Queenstown, New Zealand bar.
The sanction – which was a public humiliation of England’s most-capped centre – angered the Rugby Players’ Association, which described the treatment and fine as “extraordinary”.
Tindall will appeal and believes he has been made a scapegoat for England’s World Cup failure. He broke no curfew during the night out when he was filmed with a blonde woman just weeks after his wedding to the Queen’s granddaughter.
It is highly likely he now has emotional problems, has demonstrated slightly erratic behaviour and depression but it may have nothing to do with head injuries.
The Guardian’s Paul Hayward thinks the brain damage syndrome may be evidenced a little higher up than the on-field stalwarts in his biting article “Mike Tindall beaten to a moral pulp by RFU’s feuding barons”.
In the piece Hayward says Tindall, who’s career was fading in any case, deserved no sympathy at all until this stupid and openly vengeful punishment was handed down by a group of Rugby executives engaged in their own full-on war.
It has to be said there have been players in the past – like England’s Fran Cotton below – you would have bet the farm being damaged beyond all repair.
He was one of those full-on players who was everywhere on the field. This picture of him emerging from the mud like a bewildered hippopotamus is an all-time classic. Stuff the haka, pin a Fran Cotton picture to your shirts boys.
A prime candidate for serious medical intervention in later life.
Not so. The nice man emails me every week attempting to flog me shoes and clothing from his very successful trading company.
Now there’s an ex-rugby player with his head screwed on.
His brain could be worth a look too.
Posted: 13th, November 2011 | In: Sports Comments (4) | TrackBack | Permalink
