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Rugby: A New Dawn


ljkeane
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/oct/04/rugby-urged-to-cut-matches-as-study-finds-players-risk-of-mnd-is-15-times-higher

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Rugby urged to cut matches as study finds players’ risk of MND is 15 times higher

  • Study also finds increased risks of dementia and Parkinson’s
  • Consultant says contact training ‘should be a thing of the past’

...

ARTICLE CONTINUES

 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36195436/

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Neurodegenerative disease risk among former international rugby union players

Affiliations

Abstract

Background: Autopsy studies of former contact sports athletes, including soccer and rugby players, frequently report chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative pathology associated with traumatic brain injury. Nevertheless, little is known about the risk of neurodegenerative disease in these populations. We hypothesised that neurodegenerative disease risk would be higher among former elite rugby union players than the general population.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study accessing national electronic records on death certification, hospital admissions and dispensed prescriptions for a cohort of 412 male Scottish former international rugby union players and 1236 members of the general population, matched to former players by age, sex and area socioeconomic status. Mortality and incident neurodegenerative disease diagnoses among former rugby players were then compared with the matched comparison group.

Results: Over a median 32 years follow-up from study entry at age 30 years, 121 (29.4%) former rugby players and 381 (30.8%) of the matched comparison group died. All-cause mortality was lower among former rugby players until 70 years of age with no difference thereafter. During follow-up, 47 (11.4%) former rugby players and 67 (5.4%) of the comparison group were diagnosed with incident neurodegenerative disease (HR 2.67, 95% CI 1.67 to 4.27, p<0.001).

Conclusions: This study adds to our understanding of the association between contact sports participation and the risk of neurodegenerative disease. While further research exploring this interaction is required, in the meantime strategies to reduce exposure to head impacts and head injuries in sport should be promoted.

 

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On 10/5/2022 at 2:00 PM, ljkeane said:

 

The Worcester players have had their contracts terminated and are now presumably free to find another one if they can.

I'm good friends with the wife of one of the charlatans running the club into the ground. I feel really sorry for her, she's had a terrible few years, doesn't need this.

Also he got in trouble for dodgy dealings in his time as a solicitor so this is no surprise at all. 

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46 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

I'm good friends with the wife of one of the charlatans running the club into the ground. I feel really sorry for her, she's had a terrible few years, doesn't need this.

Also he got in trouble for dodgy dealings in his time as a solicitor so this is no surprise at all. 

Apparently they failed the EFL owners and directors test. That’s a pretty low bar to not get over. So, yeah, not much of a shock by the sounds of it.

Mainly I feel sorry for all the people losing their jobs over all this but hopefully it goes ok for your friend.

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Start of the Women's World Cup today. England are the big favourites but France should be competitive and New Zealand are hard to rule out. The Black Ferns have had an extremely poor period leading up to the World Cup by their usual high standards but they're at home, have done the usual thing of drafting in some sevens stars for the World Cup and, perhaps most notably, also drafted in Wayne Smith to coach.

The first game between France and South Africa was pretty scrappy. I was quite impressed with the South African forwards in the tight but they didn't really have any structure around that to allow themselves to take advantage. France made a lot of errors, I don't imagine they'll be happy with that performance.

There was a surprisingly good first half in the England - Fiji game. Fiji have got a big side and some sevens skills. I think they lack a bit of XVs nous but they've got some good ball carriers and, in standard Fiji style, they were looking to play rugby. England are very clinical though and they put Fiji to the sword a bit in the second half as they ran out of steam.

Probably the most notable game was the New Zealand Australia match though. The Black Ferns were really struggling for the first 30 minutes or so and were pretty lucky not to pick up a card or two to go with the 17 point lead they conceded. Once they decided to just hold onto the ball Australia couldn't live with them but that's not the most encouraging performance. If they give France a 17 point start they'll probably lose and if they give England a 17 point start they'll definitely lose.

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It's the big one this weekend - 8.00am on Saturday morning (a perfectly reasonable hour), France v England.

Really looking forwards to it.

 

 

Domestically, Wasps are joining Wuss in the adminstrator's office, and have forfeited this week's match against Exeter. Discussions happening over reducing the Prem to 10, rather than increasing to 14 - an Idea I fully support, and first proposed 15+ years ago (albeit in a more thought-through, less panicked self-interest manner):

 

 

IMO what we need is better player welfare (fewer matches/minutes per player) alongside increased interest levels (higher quality/intensity matches, larger geographic spread, greater diversity of opponents…), and re-arranging the season without shrinking it too much… Which is a bit like trying to square a circle.

 

 

 

IMO, decrease the Prem to 10 teams, 5 in each level of European rugby.
Shrink the champ to 10 (IMO: we can sustain about 20 fully pro clubs, even if they need some charity initially).
Increase promo/relegation with the Championship to 1 automatic and another play off.
Ring-fence the top two leagues (with specific criteria to eject under-performers or include ambitious semi-pro.s).

 

MSCs for both leagues, but looser than currently, predominantly administrative, and basic stadium features (any mention of capacity should be set very low; circa 2-3K; maybe include plans for increases to 10K over a sensible time period).
Same salary cap for both leagues (but without the expectation of paying up to it for the lower level Championship teams). Salary cap should be based on financial viability, not owner’s ego.
TV deal is for both leagues as one deal (ideally 2 Prem and 1 Champ match per weekend, but I’m not averse to more).
RFU academies for all.
Ideally (and this is probably a non-starter) I’d ditch the SF aspect of the Premiership finals (removing international clashes should help with this) and put the top 2 from the league straight into the final. Leagues points difference is translated into score board points at kick-off. Promotion/Relegation match can be played as the curtain raiser.

 

Create a proper domestic cup competition between the 2 leagues. (I’m unsure if 5 pools of 4, or 6 pools of 4 with 4 invitational teams [ND1? military? England Students? Eng U20? Wales? South Africa ;)] is the better option).
Knock-out stages to include Cup, Plate and Shield competitions so that everyone gets some knock-out experiences every year. Players are only available for the cup if they played less than x minutes (1800?) in the previous season (may allow a higher number for the Championship teams [who won’t be playing EPRC fixtures]).
If the cup “just” has the 20 teams, then Cup and Plate go from pools to Quarter Finals, whilst the shield goes straight into semi-finals. If inviting 4 outside teams, then all 3 can have a QF stage.

This gives us 6 pool + 3 KO weekends to fit into the 10 week international window. We've bought that by reducing the league by 4 weekends and helped player welfare with that game-time limit for the domestic cup - I'd also have a maximum number of minutes for every player anyway.

 

In terms of home matches, clubs go from 11+2 (Prem), 3+2 (EPRC) and… 0 now that the AWC has become a mid-week squad filler, to 9 (Prem), 3+2 (EPRC) and 3+2 (DomCup) so actually increase the number of home gates per season (now that the AWC has died).
Everyone is also guaranteed at least one knock-out match each year, even if they’re not guaranteed a home ground for it (might there be room to play DomCup QFs home and away?).
In terms of variety, Prem clubs go from facing 11 English opponents + 2-3 European to 9 English opponents + 2-3 European + an extra 2 English from a less usual pool of opponents.

 

Dropping 3 teams from the Premiership increases the quality there, and allows the season to be completed without clashes with international weekends.
Dropping 5 teams from the bottom, and replacing them with 3 big names from the Prem massively increases the quality of the Championship.
The Domestic Cup allows for a greater variety of opponents for the Premiership teams, and a requirement to use the back-up players. The Domestic Cup allows the Championship teams a chance at giant slaying the Prem clubs, and to measure themselves against the bigger boys, which really ought to generate interest from fans and sponsors alike.
Combine that extra interest with a proper TV deal (exposure + money) then that should grow the Championship significantly.
Increasing movement between the 2 levels, and greater cross-over matches between the 2 levels, should reduce the bounce-back aspect of promotion and relegation, whilst that and the extra funding for the Champ clubs (and the ring-fencing there) should reduce the existential fear of relegation for the Prem clubs.

 

For the champ teams, without European rugby, you could argue that they'd be lacking match numbers, despite the higher quality and TV deal. You could also argue that this is better for player welfare, allows them to rest ahead of their giant-slaying opportunities, and allow for smaller squads (and thus, smaller playing budgets at that level).
If there aren’t 7 Championship clubs willing to take on full professionalism with all those boosts, then I’d look for the RFU getting involved and "assisting" 1-3 clubs in unrepresented areas, say Carlisle, Blackburn or Canterbury.

 

In terms of financing, the Premiership’s BT deal, signed during Covid, is supposed to be in the region of £37M p.a.
The current title sponsorship deal for the Premiership is supposed to be in the regions of £10M p.a.
The current RFU/PRL deal for EPS release etc etc is supposed to be in the region of £27.5M p.a.
FTR, current funding for the Championship is in the region of £3.5M p.a.
I would argue that my suggested set-up would see increases to all of those, and possibly a title sponsor found for the Domestic Cup (and remember, that BT deal was shrunk from the previous deal, due to pandemic uncertainties and problems)

 

Currently, those payments are smoothed over 13 clubs, for £5.7M each (or in the Champ, 12 clubs, for £0.288M each)
If spread evenly over 20 clubs, it would be £3.9M each
If split 3:2 it’s be £4.7 (Prem) & £3.1M (Champ)
If split 2:1 it’d be £5.2M (Prem) & £2.6M (Champ)

If interest was increased by 20% from current levels, you could split those monies 3:2 and the Prem clubs wouldn’t lose a penny, whilst the Champ clubs would see a 13 fold increase. I would also expect increased interest to increase ticket sales, shirt sales, and the value of club sponsorship agreements – especially in the Championship.

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Great game between Australia and Scotland. Thoroughly enjoyable contest. I gotta feel for Scotland though, some superb defence in the first half of the second spell, but Aus finally made use of the wind advantage and spread the ball a bit. The officiating in this game was top notch I thought.

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Yep, nothing between the 2 teams, except the locations of tries scored.

 

France v England the match of the tourney so far, for quality, and should bee a practice run for the final. Gotta hope those french injuries aren't as bad as they look.

 

Edited by Which Tyler
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2 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

France v England the match of the tourney so far, for quality, and should bee a practice run for the final. Gotta hope those french injuries aren't as bad as they look.

I think both sides will be a bit disappointed with their performances to be honest.

The real feature of England's winning run over the last few years has been how ruthless they are at putting teams to the sword when they're on top. To spend the amount of time they did in France's 22 today and only come away with 13 points will be seen as a big failure I think.

France defended really well and admittedly did lose arguably their two best players in Sansus and Menager but their attack was pretty rubbish. Drouon had a really poor game. So a bit of a  mixed bag for them. I imagine they'll be pretty happy with how well they disrupted England but I don't think they can realistically expect to win any potential rematch if they end up on the back foot that much again.

Just as an aside I think the officials are being a bit too lenient in this tournament. There's a bit of a tendency across women's sport to view it with a patronising 'they're all lovely girls who'd never engage in deliberate cheating' attitude. That's absolute bollocks, they're just as capable of being cheating fuckers as their male counterparts. There was a blatant playing the ball off her feet under her own posts by one of the French players today which should have been  nailed on yellow. The Black Ferns should have racked up at least one yellow with all the penalties they gave away in their own 22 last week against Australia too.

ETA: I just caught up with the Scotland Australia game. Having just said the officials have been too lenient the Wallaroos seem to be the exception to that. 4 yellows and two reds in the space of two games is pretty good going.

On 10/14/2022 at 2:44 AM, Which Tyler said:

If there aren’t 7 Championship clubs willing to take on full professionalism with all those boosts, then I’d look for the RFU getting involved and "assisting" 1-3 clubs in unrepresented areas, say Carlisle, Blackburn or Canterbury.

I've played at both Blackburn and Carlisle, I'm not sure they're Championship clubs in the waiting. If you were going to pick a club further north in the North West promote up the ranks with RFU backing Preston's the obvious stand out I'd say.

Edited by ljkeane
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So, er, a shockingly good performance from England against Samoa in the opener in the Rugby League World Cup. To be perfectly honest I expected Samoa to win. For England to get a win is not a huge shock but for them to put Samoa to the sword like that is just wildly beyond expectations, about half that Samoan side were playing the NRL Grand Final a few weeks ago. That's probably the best performance I've ever seen from an England rugby league side.

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  • 2 weeks later...

NZ Rugby done goofed by scheduling the ABs test vs Japan to overlap with the RWC quarterfinal between the Black Ferns and Wales. Japan refusing to budge on the start time. Aside from the Japanese viewers (which I assume are the only viewers the JRFU really cares about) I think the RWC quarters are likely to attract a larger audience.

While most of the criticism has been about taking viewers away from the RWC quarters and this dissing the women's game, I hope what this will show is that the fanbase for the women's game is now fairly strong and established, even if not anywhere close to the top of the men's game. I'll definitely be watching the RWC quarter final in preference, if I get the chance.

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On 10/15/2022 at 9:12 PM, Which Tyler said:

Yep, nothing between the 2 teams, except the locations of tries scored.

 

France v England the match of the tourney so far, for quality, and should bee a practice run for the final. Gotta hope those french injuries aren't as bad as they look.

 

So you don't think home field advantage will get the Black Ferns through the semis, at least?

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2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So you don't think home field advantage will get the Black Ferns through the semis, at least?

The grinding forward dominant style of France and England and their discipline in implementing that style, rightly has them rated ahead of NZ and Canada. NZ in particular has had to rebuild their forward play after the disastrous end of year tour last year. They need that parity up front to then launch their devastating back play/open play style. It has improved but is still a weakness. Still, if one semi final turns out to be NZ v France, I think on the back of home advantage, NZ can edge out an injury hit France.  

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3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So you don't think home field advantage will get the Black Ferns through the semis, at least?

When I wrote that, we didn't know the makeup of the knock-out stages, and NZ really hadn't caught fire yet. At that point, France and England were the quality of the field with daylight between them and NZ&Can.

I'd still say that England and France are significantly better than NZ and Canada, andnought to win, but yes, home advantage is a thing, and will even things out between France and NZ - as will the loss of Sansus especially.

NZ were really rocked back by AU's when they applied forwards control, and discipline to their game. Aus couldn't keep that up (partly because NZ found answers at HT, and partly because Australialost concentration). England and France can.

I'd still back France v England as the likely final, but less confidently that I did 2 weeks ago.

Edited by Which Tyler
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Should be 2 cracking semi finals, but Eng v Can ought to be "never in doubt"


NZ v Fr should be fascinating.
NZ are coming into form well, whilst France are still learning to play without Sansus, especially. Hopefully Menager and Trémoulière will be fit again for the SF.

IMO France are the better team, but there's about as much in it as home advantage usually brings; so I just can't pick between them.
I'd say if France get both RM and JT back, I'd have them slight favourites; if neither, then NZ are slight favourites.
 

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Interesting major development in NZ club and school rugby [experiments?] rules here for next season: legal tackle height will be lowered to be below the chest rather than below the shoulder. The intention of course is to make the game safer. I wonder if it might have unintended consequences of more head and neck injuries for tacklers as there may be situations where you really don't want to be lowering your head to almost the waist level of the ball carrier. Sometimes the safest tackle it one that makes contact with the chest. Though it has been a looong time since I ever tried to tackle someone in a game of Rugby, so I am far from being any kind of tackle technique technician. It could be that any safety downsides are negligible.

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1 hour ago, ithanos said:

Wow, what a game developing between Canada and England.

A tad close than I expected, but it never really felt that Canada would actually win.

They really need to sort professionalism out though, or they will start dropping down. A professional Canada this year, and today could have been a very different story.

 

Cracking match though.

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Wow what a game between NZ and France. Absolute heartbreak for

Spoiler

France, missing a penalty kick that should be scored 85-90% of the time. But such pressure to make it, the moment got to the kicker.

Complete elation for

Spoiler

the Black Ferns. Home field advantage just gets them through, Eden park keeping the magic alive even for the women.

 

Edited by The Anti-Targ
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2 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

A tad close than I expected, but it never really felt that Canada would actually win.

They really need to sort professionalism out though, or they will start dropping down. A professional Canada this year, and today could have been a very different story.

 

Cracking match though.

 

There was a moment in the second half where, if Canada had pressed on to score, they could've led, which would have been interesting to see England chasing the game for once - alas a brilliant length of the field try put an end to that. Agreed professionalism needs to be nurtured across the top tier as much as possible.

Absolute cracker in the second semi between France and New Zealand. Right down to the wire.

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