“That decision should be taken out of players’ hands”
This article is sourced from www.theguardian.com/
Wales and British and Irish Lions star Jamie Roberts believes that sooner rather than later, concussed players will have to wait longer than six days to return to play.
Roberts, who currently play for the Dragons and is a qualified doctor, said:
“It doesn’t sit well with me. I think it has to be two weeks, I really do. I’ve been that player fighting all week to pass my protocols because you don’t want to let your teammates down. That decision should be taken out of players’ hands.”
However, the 35-year-old, who has won two Grand Slams with Wales and starred on the Lions tour to Australia in 2013, is less convinced that cases of early onset dementia affecting a number of players are yet definitive proof the whole of rugby is on a road to hell.
He said: “From an evidence-based medicine approach we’re in very dangerous territory if we’re saying: ‘It was definitely rugby that caused it.’ There are so many other possible factors: dietary factors, genetic factors, depression, lifestyle. On the one hand we have a group of rugby players who have these symptoms. On the other we have a huge cohort of rugby players who’ve had many head collisions who haven’t.
“Until the first cohort of professional players donate their brains, there is no way of drawing a direct link. There needs to be more research funding to allow us to better understand it. I am definitely not in denial but we need to work far harder to prove it is rugby that causes this.”
“It doesn’t sit well with me. I think it has to be two weeks, I really do.”