World Rugby Chief Medical Officer Martin Raftery said that the laws of rugby "could be changed in an effort to reduce cases of concussion," according to Greg Hurst of the LONDON TIMES. As England hosts the Rugby World Cup, "sparking record domestic interest in the sport, a safety review is being carried out by World Rugby which could lead to a rewriting of the regulations around tackling." Raftery revealed details of the review in a documentary, "Rugby and the Brain: Tackling the Truth," to be broadcast on BBC One on Monday night. The review comes as a leading headmaster calls for children playing the sport to be put in teams "based on their size instead of age to avoid a spate of injuries inflicted by bigger pupils." In the Panorama documentary, to be shown in Scotland, Raftery said, "There's no doubt that the biggest area that we think, that we know, where concussion is going to occur, is in the tackle, so that will help us to look at the tackle and see what we can do to make it safer" (LONDON TIMES, 9/21). The BBC noted reported concussions in rugby have doubled in five years and a U.K. expert said that on average "one player at every Six Nations match suffered a brain injury." The number of reported concussions in English rugby rose by 59% in '13-14. In Scotland, the number of cases being reported has "also nearly doubled in the past two years," after the Scottish Rugby Union called for incidents to be "flagged up." Raftery is reviewing video evidence from 900 concussions in an "attempt to identify why the injuries occur." Any possible changes to the laws "would be based on this analysis." That evidence and any recommendations would be presented to the governing body's Laws Committee. That body would then take a "final decision." SRU Chief Medical Officer Dr. James Robson agreed that "rule changes were needed to make the game safer." He said that injury data from the grassroots game had been gathered over the past couple of years and the number of concussions had "almost doubled in that time" (BBC, 9/21).
