Rugby chiefs are being urged to reduce the number of matches by a traumatic head injury expert behind a study that has found increased dangers of former players developing brain diseases.
The research led by the University of Glasgow into brain injuries in former athletes showed that men who played professional rugby had more than twice the risk of neurodegenerative disease.
Consultant neuropathologist Professor Willie Stewart said the findings should be a stimulus for rugby to act quicker than it has been – after “pretty slow” progress – to reduce the risks of playing the sport.
Expansion is on the agenda in rugby union with discussions over creating a new men’s global competition to be staged by countries in between quadrennial World Cups.
Prof Stewart said: “Instead of talking about extending seasons and introducing new competitions and global seasons they should be talking about restricting it as much as possible, cutting back on the amount of rugby we’re seeing and getting rid of as much training as possible.
“Things like that have to be addressed pretty rapidly.”
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The Football Association provided some funding for the study, which expands on the 2019 report by Prof Stewart’s team that found former male professional footballers had a 3.5 times higher rate of death from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s than the general population.
Football has already taken moves to reduce heading.
Prof Stewart said the priority in rugby, with greater high-impact contact, should be reducing the risk of repetitive head injuries and commissioning further studies.
His latest research examined the health of 412 Scottish men who played international rugby compared to 1,200 people from the general population.
The study points to a 15-times higher risk of a motor neurone disease diagnosis among the retired players.
He said: “Look at the number of matches being played and ask, ‘Is this credible that young men and women can be playing week-in, week-out, for the majority of the year just for entertainment?’
“I know it’s tough to think about there being less rugby rather than more but maybe less is more if you see better quality rugby, the players are less damaged and fitter.
“You can’t continue to put young men and women through what they’re being put through now we know even from the amateur era there’s this risk of brain disease.”
Professor Jonathan Cook, associate professor and medical statistician at the University of Oxford, said the findings appeared “worrying” while saying the “number of neurodegenerative diseases occurring is, thankfully, still relatively small”.
