Bill Sweeney, the head of England’s Rugby Football Union (RFU), said that it had been “a very challenging week” in the wake of news that a group of former players are set to take legal action after suffering brain damage they say was the result of concussions.
England’s World Cup-winning prop Steve Thompson said this week that he had no memory of the 2003 final, and, along with several other former players, held the sport’s various governing bodies responsible for their failure to adequately protect the players from long-term mental impairment.
“It’s a very serious matter, a very serious moment for us, this has been a very challenging week,” Sweeney told reporters on Friday.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“First and foremost in these legalistic times, this is very much a human story and we recognize the difficulties the families are going through and then bringing these stories into the public,” he said. “We applaud them for doing that, but also in the context of their motivation, which is to improve the game and make it better and safer for future generations.”
Sweeney said that the RFU had yet to receive any details from lawyers representing the players and was evasive when asked if the world’s biggest rugby union had insurance in place for such a claim, well aware that in 2016 the NFL settled a US$765 million class action from players who suffered brain damage from playing football.
“It’s not a time to hide, not a time to go missing, it’s really a time to be open and transparent,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure we’re making the necessary changes, to ensure we’ve got the safest possible game across all the different levels.”
“We do take player welfare extremely seriously — I want to reassure you of that — and it features in every strategic document we produce,” Sweeney said.
Sweeney went to great lengths to outline the progress the sport has made in dealing with concussion, from the implementation of new return-to-play protocols, changes in the laws to try to lower tackle height and the graduated levels of contact allowed in youth rugby.
“This is not a project that has a start date and a finish date,” he said. “This is something that we know we have to continually work on as players get fitter and stronger. We need to find ways to adapt to and operate with that rule framework.”
“It’s important to stress that the aim to make the sport safer, and all the work that goes into that, that’s a journey that has no conclusion,” Sweeney said.
Sweeney said he had tried to contact Thompson this week — although his initial attempts had been foiled by having the wrong telephone number.
“We’ve tried, that’s just to have a chat and see how he’s doing,” he said.
Sweeney also said that it would take years to bring the RFU’s finances back on track after an expected loss of around £135 million (US$178.5 million) of revenue this year due to the impact of COVID-19.
“We’re on top of the situation, having restructured the business that resulted in 119 redundancies ... but it will take a few more years to get back to being debt free,” he said.
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