The whole concussion conversation has been hijacked by Vlad and Kent and Co but Webster offers a good, measured argument without the hysteria displayed in the other rag.
Instead of making those who suffer from concussion poster boys for their cause, why not talk to them?
www.smh.com.au
The NRL must stop using players like Cordner to sell head-high crackdown
She’s quite the fickle mistress, the grand old dame we know and love as rugby league. She keeps us guessing, continually changing and evolving, and we love her for it.
Yes, we love you, rugby league. We do.
Lately, however, we can read you like a book. Actually, the form guide.
On Monday morning, when Roosters captain Boyd Cordner announced his retirement because of a series of concussions, you just knew he was about to become the latest poster boy for the NRL’s head-high crackdown.
Phil Gould foreshadowed as much on 100% Footy on Channel Nine – the publisher of this masthead – on Monday night.
“I hope they don’t make him the poster boy,” Gould said. “He admits that it was his own tackling technique that caused the issues.”
Come on down, Graham Annesley, the head of football at the NRL!
“It is another example of high-profile players that over recent years have had to cut their careers short because of unnecessary contact with the head and neck,” Annesley told News Corp.
There’s drinking the Kool-Aid and then there’s diving into a big pool of the Kool-Aid and slowly doing backstroke.
Annesley’s remark is another example of the spin, spin, spin from the people who run the game to prove they’re right and everyone else is wrong. It’s another example of the NRL treating its players and fans like fools.
When I read Annesley’s quotes, I nearly fell off my chair. I was standing a foot from Cordner at his emotional, heartfelt media conference and he made it very clear that he supported what the NRL was doing but his head knocks were a result of his own “tackling technique”.
In other words, from tackling low, head colliding with the ball-carrier’s hip.
Even then, when Cordner was supporting them, his words were manipulated by the people who run the game just to prove a point.
How disgraceful of the NRL to use Cordner to suit its own nefarious needs; to fit snugly into its own bedtime story it keeps telling itself that it’s serious about concussion.
The way Annesley used up Cordner to stay on-message lines up with everything we’ve witnessed since the farcical scenes of Magic Round when the NRL spoke about the crackdown at a chief executive’s conference a few hours before its first match.
In the past month, former players who are suffering from dementia have been used as aforementioned poster boys so the NRL can take control of a narrative of which it never had a firm hold.
Tellingly, not one of those stories – not one! – has pointed out that some of these players haven’t played in 30 years or more, when head-high tackles were common and delivered with impunity; when there was no such thing as concussion protocols; when experts were barely aware of the damage caused by repeated head knocks.
Slightly important facts worth mentioning, don’t you think?
ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys essentially declared the war had been won in a bizarre interview with Ben Fordham on 2GB last Friday following Origin I.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/ha...ests-stance-is-softening-20210610-p57zrv.html
Referee Gerard Sutton clearly put the whistle away and the Bunker put its feet up and ordered pizza during NSW’s 50-6 win. How else to explain the reaction to the high shots of Kyle Feldt on Cameron Murray, and Moeaki Fotuaika on Latrell Mitchell, and then Cameron Munster’s sly kick into the guts of Liam Martin?
No complaints here. The game flowed. We weren’t talking about the match officials, for a change, just the champagne rugby league on display. Let the match review committee deal with it.
V’landys saw it differently, claiming the match proved that “thuggery to the head” had been eliminated and it was “bringing women back to watch the game”.
Ok then.
Then we watched another round of NRL lunacy in which Titans forward Kevin Proctor wasn’t sin-binned when he should have been; and Broncos forward Kobe Hetherington was sent off when he shouldn’t have been; then the hilarious sight of alleged Bulldogs hardman Jack Hetheringtontheatrically grabbing his head to milk a penalty for a stray hand from Dragons hooker Andrew McCullough.
“I had respect for you before that,” Dragons prop Blake Lawrie told Hetherington.
You could say the same thing about the current NRL administration, which feels more like a political party than a governing body. More concerned with winning the public relations battle instead of adopting a serious, holistic approach to head injuries.
Instead of using up former players to sell its message, instead of making them poster boys, why not talk to them?
Roosters co-captain Jake Friend retired in May but hasn’t received a call from head office. Has the NRL reached out to Tim Glasby, who retired last year because of concussion and is now working at the Storm?
These former players could offer some rare insight into the concussion issue; how they were caused, how they were treated, how the game can move forward.
I’d prefer their opinions than the numerous armchair neurologists out there who are prepared to speak on their behalf.
Cordner took a call from chief executive Andrew Abdo on the day he retired. Abdo confirmed to this column he wants to catch up with the retired Roosters captain in the future to make sure he stays involved in the game, although not specifically about concussion.
Abdo is smart enough, though, to realise the game needs to widen its horizons on this issue.
What he did tell me was that the NRL had established its medical advisory board, headed by Dr David Heslop, the highly regarded biosecurity expert on Project Apollo last year.
That will be welcomed by several clubs, which continually complain about not getting enough support from head office about how to handle concussions.
Thankfully, there’s acceptance from several people at the NRL that a serious, wide-ranging approach to concussions involving every stakeholder is needed – not the ad hoc approach we have now. Punishing head-high contact is merely part of the problem.
Instead of continually blabbering to their mates in the media, and using up past players to sell their message, why don’t the people running the game devise and outline a clear, all-inclusive strategy about how they’re protecting its players?
The players will buy into that. So will the fans. It’s a message we could all support.
