One decision NRL owes its warhorses

The NRL’s new stance on concussion is welcomed but there is one other reform they must implement immediately.

As South Sydney prop Hame Sele lay motionless after a tackle gone wrong in the opening minute of the game against the Roosters on Friday night, the NRL’s focus was on the new concussion protocols implemented last week.

Sele will now sit out the mandatory 11 days before being allowed to return to the field.

There are more changes needed to protect the brain health of the young men playing the game. There needs to be less collision in training. The contact sessions must be reduced – as Roosters five-eighth Luke Keary pointed out – this was something the NFL were onto over a decade ago. Being knocked out in a game is one of the inherit risks of contact sport.

But now, some of the consequences once invisible are revealing themselves in the most tragic circumstances. Former players are taking their own lives. Their brains have been found with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) – a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated trauma to the head.

The sudden passing of halfback and former Cowboys coach Paul Green, who was found to have stage three CTE, was a chance for the NRL to be proactive regarding the welfare of former footballers.

A simple starting point is paying for brain scans for footballers who played in the most brutal of eras.

NRL great James Graham, whose independently sourced brain scan last year showed degeneration, has repeatedly advocated that the governing body should implement a brain, body and mind check for former players.

One of the hardest men to have played the game, Mark “Spudd” Carroll, spoke bravely of his probable CTE diagnosis in The Weekend Australian. He opened up on his suicidal thoughts, how on some mornings on his way to work at 5.05am he has thought of driving into an oncoming semi-trailer to end his life.

Hame Sele is injured against the Roosters on Friday night Picture: Getty Images

“Spudd” is now asking for more to be done so the “suffering in silence” stops.

The only reason he sought help was because he listened to the Head Noise podcast. He got doctor Rowena Mobbs’ number from Graham. If he hadn’t sought help? He would have been living with “squirrels” in his head and had no idea why.

“If I had not found out, I would have lost my family,” Carroll said.

Carroll, who had more than 50 concussions in first grade, believes brain scans should be provided to all former footballers by the NRL. He has called on ARLC chair Peter V’landys and NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo to make it happen. “I believe there should be more care for ex-footballers of all eras,” Carroll said. “I think the NRL – which made a $63m profit last year – should be providing MRI/PET scans.”

A mandatory stand-down period for concussion is a step in the right direction, but almost certainly too little, and definitely too late for some.