Smith’s legs had clearly gone after the collision – if it was boxing the referee would certainly have stopped the fight for safety reasons – but it appears that he was deemed fine to continue by the medics having “passed the concussion tests.”
The question is this - how hard can these tests be?
It used to be the case that anyone concussed had to take a mandatory 3 week break from the game – an eminently sensible practice given that effectively what has happened is that a player has suffered a neurological injury. Then the protocol was changed to a week – still way too short in my experience (and I’ve been reasonably seriously concussed a couple of times) - but enough, apparently, to allow sufficient neurological tests to be conducted.
I was surprised, therefore, to learn that rugby now operates a “5-minute rule” – where medics are allowed to test a player for an entire 5 minutes to check if he is ok to carry on playing. Apparently the player only has to stand up straight without falling over and pass a basic memory test.
5 minutes. Is someone seriously trying to tell me that standing up and remembering your name is sufficient to convince a medic that you have not suffered a possibly serious brain injury?
If this lunacy continues someone, somewhere is going to die or suffer permanent brain damage.
I trust the IRB have checked their insurance cover.
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