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PETER FITZSIMONS
Last updated 10:12
11/07/2013
OPINION: Four minutes and 39 seconds into the third Test against the Lions on Saturday, 32-year-old Wallabies breakaway George Smith, playing his first Test in four years, had a fearful head clash with the Lions hooker and fell to the ground, knocked senseless.
We groaned. Such an important player, on such a crucial occasion, and he was now clearly out of the match - something confirmed as he had to be helped to his feet and assisted from the field by two men, even as both his left leg and left arm were clearly in spasm.
But wait! Somehow, just over five minutes later, he runs back out onto the field, and takes his place once more in the Wallabies?
A miracle? No, a disgrace.
For let us be clear: Smith not only had suffered concussion, but very bad concussion.
In his own words, ''It obviously affected me. You saw me snake dancing off the field. I passed the [concussion] tests that were required within those five minutes and I got out there.''
What concussion tests? Specifically, it is a newly instituted one from the IRB, called pitch side concussion assessment or PSCA - or the five-minute rule.
The essential idea of it is to give the player a series of tests and ask questions to separate those who are genuinely concussed from those who have just taken a big body hit and will be right once they have gathered themselves.
But if Smith was not suffering concussion on Saturday night, what the hell was it - freaking FLU!??!
One who had no doubt as to the danger of the whole thing was Phillip Sweeney, physiotherapist of 20 years standing including five as a neurological physio in a brain injury rehabilitation unit in Britain, who wrote to me.
''When Smith was dragged to his feet and helped off,'' Sweeney notes, ''his left leg was all over the place. He was clearly shaking his left hand and trying to tell his attendants that he was troubled by this.
"The left leg kept collapsing as he walked. Now, it's clear that the right side of the brain governs the left side of the body … The man had clearly suffered no injury to the left leg, nor hand/arm. This was … a neurological injury.
"It's a classic example of a head injury during sport, and for the great man to come back on the pitch amounts to negligence.''
I agree. Not negligence of the medical professional who administed the IRB's concussion test, but those who imposed the system.
In what other field of employment would an employee who had just suffered major brain trauma be allowed/encouraged to get back to it five minutes later?
If you or I had been engaged in a work practice that, through misadventure, made our brains bleed, just how legally liable would our employer be in having us get back to it a few minutes later - doing exactly the same thing, except this time we would not be so alert?
And just what would have happened to Smith if he had received exactly the same knock, on exactly the same spot of his head?
And how many junior rugby clubs around Australia, and around the world watching this epic clash, taking their cue from what happens in the big leagues, would have got the message that concussion is no big deal?
See, even when you are knocked motherless, you can get back out there! You will be considered ''tough!''
I repeat: I accept the medical professional involved, who gave Smith the PSCA test, acted with integrity. He or she is not the problem. This newly instituted test is. And I am not the only one horrified.
Earlier this year the former Irish international and now respected medico, Barry O'Driscoll, resigned after 15 years as an IRB medical adviser because his nephew, playing for Ireland against France in the Six Nations, also returned to the field five minutes later after suffering serious concussion.
''Rugby is trivialising concussion,'' he told the newspaper Scotland on Sunday. ''They are sending these guys back on to the field and into the most brutal arena.
"It's ferocious out there. The same player who 18 months ago was given a minimum of seven days recovery time is now given five minutes. There is no test that you can do in five minutes that will show that a player is not concussed.
"It is accepted the world over. We have all seen players who have appeared fine five minutes after a concussive injury then vomiting later in the night. To have this as acceptable in rugby, what kind of message are we sending out?
''We're going from being stood down for three weeks to one week to five minutes with players who are showing exactly the same symptoms. The five-minute rule came out of the blue. I couldn't be a part of it so I resigned from the IRB. It saddened me, but I couldn't have my name attached to that decision.''
Bravo, Dr O'Driscoll. This rule is a disgrace and runs entirely contrary to the medically informed tide of the 21st century, when it comes to the way to treat concussion
Yes, the imperatives of big business sport wants the stars out there, come what may, most particularly in enormously important matches like the third and deciding Lions Test.
But simple decency, basic sanity and - make no mistake - legal liability, says when a sportsperson is concussed, when THEIR BODY IS GOING INTO SPASM, they need to sit it out.
This new rule is as ludicrous as it is dangerous and the case of George Smith proves it to be so. Whatever the IRB has to say about it, SANZAR and the ARU have to abandon it immediately.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/opinion...est-a-disgrace
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