Dr. Ross Tucker believes rugby's HIA system is one of the best in place to manage head injuries in modern sport.
The Chief Science and Research Consultant for World Rugby. The role is to support all decisions that involve player welfare.
The South African joined Nathan Murphy on this evening’s OTB.
“I would like to thing we have in place one of the most robust management system. When a head injury happens in the game, you’ve got a number of things you need to do: recognise, treat and manage that player. Id like to think that we’ve got a good system; by no means perfect but I’d like to think it’s one of the better ones, and that’s in the form of the head injury assessment.”
Tucker doesn’t think many other sports are doing something on the level of HIA but says there are still plenty of improvements they can make to the system. He says it’s a solid basis for the system.
“I don’t see many sports that are doing something at that level, and again, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it’s a perfect system. We know that it doesn’t catch 100% of the cases. We recognise that there are sometimes issues but we have to improve those. But at the same time I think it’s a fairly good, solid system at the moment to recognise,’ added tucker.
Tucker pointed out they are looking to improve on diagnosis, and how they can prevent head injuries from taking place.
“In the last couple of years we have done a good deal of research, to understand how they happen because if we know how they happen; we can act to prevent them. That’s the current focus, and it’s obviously challenging because you are trying to change behaviour, and that doesn’t happen over night."
You can listen to the full interview below
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