Wasted chance to lead the way in looking after young players

Photos provided by Boston University showing sections from a normal brain, top, and from the brain of a former college footballer, bottom, in stage IV of CTE. Picture: LiveScience

The collision sports – governed by AFL, NRL and Rugby Australia – are yet to sign up to the latest advice from the Australian Institute of Sport that kids should be rested from competition for at least 21 days after suffering a concussion.

Australia’s major sports have so far wasted this opportunity to lead the way on the issue that is gripping the sports here and abroad.

Encouraging a minimum 21-day rest period to protect kids and grassroots players from brain damage is the right thing to do, and the major sports should have backed in the AIS’s call now.

But really, the debate also needs to extend from sensibly standing down our junior athletes to embracing what leading experts say is the right thing to do: ban tackling for kids under 12.

Late last year, in the largest study of its kind, Boston University researchers studied the brains of 152 young athletes who had been exposed to repetitive head impacts from “youth, high school or college sports” and who died before the age of 30. These young athletes played sports like football, rugby, soccer and ice hockey.

Boston University found that 41 per cent of these young athletes had evidence of CTE.

Most of them had mild CTE, while 71 per cent of them were classified as “amateur” athletes.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is a degenerative brain disease caused by repetitive head trauma.

Report author Dr Ann McKee, a neuropathologist and director of the BU CTE Centre, said the study “clearly showed” the brain disease starts early. “The fact over 40 per cent of young contact and collision sport athletes in the UNITE brain bank have CTE is remarkable – considering that studies of community brain banks show fewer than 1 per cent of the general population has CTE.”

CTE can only be formally diagnosed post-mortem and has been associated with memory loss, confusion, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, impaired judgment and suicidal behaviour.

As the AFL and the NRL debate formally limiting contact in elite training – an initiative the US’s NFL has already embraced (after a $1bn CTE lawsuit) – some former NFL stars understand the importance of changing the game at its grassroots.

Super Bowl champion Rob Gronkowski last month backed a ban for kids under 12 years old from playing tackle football.

Rob Gronkowski celebrates Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl LV win in 2021. Picture: Getty Images

When quizzed about the California State Committee on Sports voting to advance a Bill to ban kids under 12 years from playing tackle football, the former New England Patriots tight end said it was a “fair proposal”.

“I’m for it,” he said. “I love the game of football, and I love that these kids want to play ... But to play the game of football at such a young age, I think is a little dangerous.”

Gronkowski, who played basketball, baseball and hockey until taking up football in seventh grade, said kids should just play “flag football”.

Talk to any neurologist and they’ll tell you preventing kids from tackling until they are 12 is the right thing to do. They’ve been saying it for years – and some believe they should not be allowed to tackle until 14.

Currently, the NRL, AFL and junior rugby union still have the opportunity to tackle in forms of the game in the under 12s. While there are non-contact versions of their games such as touch rugby and Auskick, most kids experience tackling early, say neurologists – and they do too much of it.

The AIS should be commended in joining forces with British and New Zealand sporting authorities, to press for the adoption of universal guidelines to safeguard junior and community sport participants from long-term trauma.

A minimum period of 21 days until the resumption of competitive contact/collision sport is a step in the right direction and encouraging “extended rest periods for anyone who suffers multiple concussions” is smart.

At last year’s coronial inquiry into the death of Shane Tuck – a former AFL footballer for Richmond who took his own life at 38 and was found to have CTE – BU’s Dr Bob Cantu addressed the court. His evidence was that CTE was “most closely correlated not with the number of concussions sustained but rather with the amount of repetitive head trauma someone has accumulated”.

With this in mind, Victorian coroner John Cain Jr said the AFL should reduce full-contact training in order to reduce the amount of sub-concussive head injury – a bump to the head that doesn’t cause symptoms – players are exposed to on the field.

But while the sports seem to grapple and debate with just minimising contact at the elite level, the real way for these major codes to protect their athletes starts simply with looking after the footy-playing kids better.