Serious spinal injury statistics released

Press, 23 September 1985, Page 31

Serious spinal injury statistics released

NZPA staff correspondent Sydney Twenty-two rugby league and union players have suffered serious spinal injuries in New South Wales in the last two years, according to figures just released. Of those, six have died or become paraplegics, two are expected to be permanently disabled, while the outcome of the remaining cases is unknown or uncertain, a summary of the figures in the “Sun” newspaper said. The figures came from the State Government’s Sporting Injuries Compensation Committee, a week after the distraught father of a teenager who died in hospital days after being injured in a rugby union scrum collapse, called on parents not to let their children play the game. Several of the injuries resulted from tackles, not just from scrums, the committee’s secretary, Mr John Mac Kay, said.

There were also a “worrying” number of brain damage cases among footballers, he said.

“Some of these have resulted in permanent brain damage, or impaired mental capacity,” said Mr Mac Kay. “We are also still getting a handful of other injuries, such as ruptured spleens and other abdominal problems.” The new figures follow the release of another report last week that surveyed six spinal injuries centres around Australia, and found 114 cases of quadraplegia caused by football.

That study, by the Children’s Spinal Research Foundation, was headed by Professor Tom Taylor, professor of orthopaedic and traumatic surgery at the University of Sydney. He found 50 per cent of spinal injuries in rugby union occurred in scrums, while the figure in league was 25 per cent.

That finding prompted the New South Wales Sport Minister, Mr Michael Cleary, a former Australian test wing in both rugby codes, to predict that rugby union would die unless something could be done to stop the “alarming” number of spinal injuries. “It will be a voluntary demise of the game — parents just won’t let their sons play,” he said. The rugby unions of both New Zealand and Australia have in the last two years made major changes rules,

especially for junior rugby, to try and lessen dangers, particularly in the scrum. And the executive director of the Australian Rugby Union, Mr John Dedrick, said the changes were beginning to have an effect, with the incidence of rugby union injuries this year extremely low. But the figures showed the safest of the three major ball games in New South Wales was soccer, which recorded only one of the 22 spinal injury cases. In the last two years there had been three deaths or paraplegia in each of the rugby codes, and none in soccer. There were two cases of permanent disability resulting from rugby league, none from union, and one — the only major injury in two years from soccer — while there were nine spinal injuries from rugby union, where the result was still not known.