Kent: The dangers of concussions in NRL isn’t up for debate

Rugby league was told of dangers that concussions represent to player forty years ago - it’s time we started to listen writes Paul Kent.

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Among the tattered pages of Tim Pickup’s scrapbook is the warning rugby league ignored.

The scrapbook reads like a manual on brain injury and the game’s troubled history.

In one story, a sequence of photos with provocative captions, he is being picked up and turned upside down and driven into the ground like a tent peg.

“Tim … Picked-Up … And Dumped …”

He was unconscious on the ground in the third photo.

A few pages away a Rugby League Week front page, the magazine which sold on a solid mixture of shock and hysteria, screams “BRAIN DAMAGE DANGER”.

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The warnings about the danger of head injuries in rugby league are not new.

Tim Pickup, in his playing days with Canterbury Bankstown. Picture: Canterbury Bulldogs

Pickup had already played 11 Tests for Australia by the time he ran out this afternoon for Canterbury at Leichhardt Oval, taking on Balmain, and got knocked out along with teammate Mark Hughes.

The claims came from the then-Parramatta doctor Peter Manollaras.

“I know it sometimes isn’t practical for a club to rest a player for a round because he had concussion but, in normal circumstances, nobody should play football the week after being confused,” Dr Manollaras said.

“However, if a player is concussed two weeks running I have to insist that he be rested for a week.

“If he is hit again the chances are there that he could suffer permanent brain damage or other serious injury.

“After being concussed twice a player’s reflexes slow noticeably and he becomes prone to all manner of injury, not just those associated with the head.

“Fortunately, I haven’t seen a footballer with brain damage yet, but this amazes me.”

Ryan Matterson has had two lengthy stints on the sideline as a result of concussions. Picture: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

If anybody ever asks the price the game asks of those who serve it then they need to know no more than that a decade ago Pickup, now 72, headed to Los Angeles for treatment on his brain.

The whole concussion debate currently engulfing the game needs to be quietened. Out of the violence of that era a generation of players now struggle with dementia and related brain damage.

Rugby league needs to find that better place, and it can.

After all, the game has been through something like this before.

Just a few years after Dr Manollaras’ grim warning the NSW Rugby League hired Jim Comans to clean up the game.

Comans ran the judiciary and packed his steel-capped boots every Monday night.

John Quayle always said it was a terrible time for the game but adds it had to happen.

Suspensions for violence went from a week and a fortnight to 12 months and in some cases 18 months in Common’s drive to eradicate it from the game.

The headlines were the same then as they are this week.

Protest and outrage. Complaints the game has lost its way. Stiff arms and spear tackles were part of the game’s fabric, they moaned, and without them the game was getting soft.

Jake Friend‘s career was cut short as a result of repeated head injuries. Picture: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

There was nothing but silence in terms of support.

The lack of support came from the same people as they do today; those with a self-interest.

Clubs and players, mostly, whose greatest fear is the immediate, that they would be disadvantaged by losing players for next week’s game.

Quayle fought the resistance of clubs and coaches and believes it took about three years before the game finally got the result it went looking for.

The game not only survived under the cleaner rules of play, it flourished.

The Tina Turner era was ushered in on the back of the cleaner image and took another great leap forward.

The Flat Earth Society is back again, this time arguing against changes introduced to attempt to lessen the concussions in the game to save its athletes.

It ignores the narratives around the world.

Dementia in contact sports in England is on the verge of being recognised as an industrial disease by the British government after the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council heard evidence at a recent inquiry that professional players were three times more likely to die of neurodegenerative diseases.

Already the case is being pursued in AFL for similar recognition after recent coronary reports found evidence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in Danny Frawley, Polly Farmer and Shane Tuck.

Tuck’s death is currently before the coroner’s court where evidence the first signs of CTE were there at age 16.

There is also a push for the AFL to create a care fund, at a cost of about $25 million a year, and similar to that created for asbestos sufferers in the James Hardie case, to care for players suffering from dementia-related illnesses.

These are problems that have not escaped the NRL’s notice and form part of the game’s fight to lessen the damage inflicted on its players.

Already lawyers are lining up former players for a class action against the NRL, which is well-known within the game.

Tim Pickup was almost flattened by the posse of lawyers knocking down his door but wants nothing to do with them.

He wants nothing but the best for the game.

More, he wants to see it flourish.

Originally published as Kent: The dangers of concussions in NRL isn’t up for debate