We now know 185 former professional and semi-professional rugby players are suing World Rugby, the Welsh Rugby Union and the Rugby Football Union over permanent injuries caused by brain damage in what is set to become a landmark case in the sport.
We also know around 50 of them are former Welsh professional players.
Just as the National Football League, the United States' elite American Football league, had their own day of reckoning in the past decade, rugby union is now heading down a similar path as legal action involving a group of rugby players diagnosed with early-onset dementia and other irreversible neurological impairments is now destined for the courts.
A pre-action claim was filed in December 2020 on behalf of a group of nine players, which has since grown to 185 with former Wales captain Ryan Jones the latest to join. The court will now take over management of the cases, paving the formal path to a trial.
The potential financial and other consequences for the game would see it changed forever.
As part of the legal proceedings announced, a series of allegations the players are making against the governing bodies have been laid out These damning claims are that the sport's governing bodies failed to:
- take any proper steps as the game turned professional to respond to a disregard for player safety and brain health at the club and international level.
- take adequate steps to inform, educate or warn the Claimants about the risks of permanent brain damage.
- reduce the amount of contact allowed in training.
- reduce the number of matches per season/year.
- keep or extend the mandatory 21 day stand down period after a concussion, instead of reducing it.
- seek or follow expert medical or other advice available to them with regard to the risk of permanent brain injury.
- act on the knowledge that concussions often have delayed presentation and that the 5- or 10-minute assessments introduced during a match were wholly inadequate.
- devise and implement rules to limit the number of substitutions of non-injured players and thereby reduce the risk to players of heavy collisions.
- devise and implement a brain injury specific player passport system.
- ensure that the Claimants were subjected to regular monitoring, such as by way of MRI, and medical examination to check for evidence of changes to the structure of the brain.
- institute or commission adequate research into the effects of multiple concussive and sub-concussive impacts on the brain and the prevention of permanent brain injury.
In 2013, the NFL reached a $765 million agreement with 4,500 former players over head trauma lawsuits. In 2016, the league settled concussion lawsuits with 20,000 former players through a $1 billion payment.
Settlements in rugby will reach nowhere near the same figures, but having been described as the biggest class action of its kind outside the US, it would still have a huge financial impact on the sport were it successful.
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