Collateral Damage - Concussion in Rugby and American Football

World Rugby and the NFL have produced some of the most colossal athletes on the planet. Men who can sprint faster than any football player but can also run through a brick wall if they choose to do so. Instead, most rugby and NFL stars run through opposing players, creating some of the greatest head to head collisions that all of sport has to offer. Now, although this may be thrilling for the fans and even a spectacle for other players to watch, it can be potentially life-threatening to the players involved. 

As these are contact sports, the risk of a concussion is obviously increased due to the sport's nature. A human being will become concussed when absorbing over 60G's. However, a common head-to-head contact on either a rugby or American football field reaches over 100G's. In the UK over 1,200 rugby players were diagnosed with a concussion in 2019, and in the NFL over 214 concussions were diagnosed, with a further third not being reported. This is what is known as collateral damage. It is a risk that each athlete willingly takes when walking out onto the field and is something that every athlete in almost any sport can identify with. So, when former players emerge from the woodwork and start to file lawsuits against governing bodies due to the long-term effects of past concussions, it starts to contradict what their attitudes and views were whilst playing. 

As an athlete, I know firsthand that recovering from any injury is one of the most frustrating phases that you can go through, especially when suffering from a concussion. However, with guidelines becoming ever stricter on recovering players, teams and athletes will start to bend the rules for their own success. Not only is this potentially harmful to an athlete's current state, but can severely damage their brain if they were to receive further blows to the head; something which is frequent in both World Rugby and the NFL. However, at the time, this is a conscious decision made by both the players and the team, and most athletes are fully aware of the risk they are taking when returning to play. 

So bearing all this in mind, the thought of then complaining and filing lawsuits starts to seem a bit bizarre, especially when the sports heavy contact nature is taken into account. In fact, when put into perspective, the request starts to seem even odder. For example, you wouldn't expect a boxer to file a lawsuit against an opponent after suffering a KO or for a Formula One driver to file a lawsuit against a team after crashing. This is because it is a direct result of competing in the sport and every athlete will understand that although there are great risks to what they are doing, the reward is much greater.