'The science is evolving...'
... and other troubling things from the Week That Was and the Weekend That Will Be.
Another week, another sobering piece of news regarding the links between contact sport and neurodegenerative disease.
A Scottish study, similar to one being carried out in New Zealand, discovered former international rugby players were more than twice as likely to suffer from dementia, three times more likely to contract Parkinson’s disease and a staggering 15 times more likely to be diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
“The evidence that exposure to collision sports is associated with increased rates of morbidity and death from neurodegenerative diseases is continuing to accumulate,” said AUT Professor Patria Hume, world leading sports injury biomechanist.
Stuff asked New Zealand Rugby’s general manager of professional rugby and performance, Chris Lendrum, to comment on the findings.
Most of what he said was good, common sense. You could not fault him on accuracy, but the following lines, outwardly banal but which carry weight, have worn thin.
“But clearly the science is still evolving...’’
“We know that we don’t yet have a complete scientific picture to work with…”
“But the challenge is, and this study says this as well, that further research exploring the interaction between head contact and neurodegenerative disease is required.”
This just plays into the narrative that Big Sport is not so much embracing science as it is hiding behind it, which I’m sure was not Lendrum’s intention.
Of course science is still evolving. It’s what it does. The simplistic example I like to use is that Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, but it hasn’t stopped the medical science community trying to develop more effective antibiotics.
Science evolves. There will always be a need for “further research exploring the interaction between head contact and neurodegenerative disease” even as the links become more firmly established.
This idea that we reach an endpoint when rugby bosses can finally say, “Ah, right, now we can accept the science,” is disingenuous and comes across as condescending.
The sort of lines parroted by Lendrum above need to stop being the first thing contact-sport leaders reach for.
In many respects, rugby, even without being spurred by an impending lawsuit, is leading the way in terms of proactivity in the head injury space, even risking alienating fans as it tries to get the point of contact on tackles and cleanouts lower.
There is some outstanding work being done by people outside and even within rugby’s walls.
It should tell that story without the meaningless caveats.
World Rugby was far more willing to accept the “evolving science” when it came to the transgender debate. In the name of safety and protecting players they have banned transgender participation in elite women’s rugby.
While I agree with their stance, it’s worth noting that there is a hell of a lot more science around the link between neurodegenerative disease and repetitive head injuries than there is around the performance advantages of transgender athletes as it pertains to women’s rugby.
Ergo, if it fits in their world view World Rugby and its constituent bodies are happy to listen to the science, but if it doesn’t then more research is needed because, well, there’s just so much we don’t know.
THE WEEK THAT WAS
The story that most piqued my interest this week was the omnishambles at Essendon Football Club. Once the gold standard of AFL clubs - at 16 they have equal most flags, though they haven’t won since 2000 and appeared in their last grand final a year later - Essendon have in more recent times become a byword for administrative incompetence, most notably the “supplements” scandal of 2012-13 that eventually saw them having to play the 2016 season with rookies and ring-ins.
The last couple of months have taken the cake, however. First they tried to hijack North Melbourne’s capture of former Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson (who is himself at the centre of a racism storm), while they still had coach Ben Rutten on the books. They failed to land Clarkson and Rutten was subsequently sacked, leading to the departure of CEO Xavier Campbell and three board members.
Just when it couldn’t get any more farcical, they trumpeted the appointment of CEO Andrew Thornton this week, only for him to “resign” 24 hours later after it was revealed he had a high-profile role with the ultra-conservative City on a Hill Church Movement, which has published anti-abortion and homophobic material.
Those views were said to be incompatible with the AFL’s push to be an inclusive organisation and aggrieved Essendon members began to start publicly disowning the club.
Thorburn resigned in a huff, perhaps ironically bemoaning the intolerance of his Christian views, and there is definitely a nuanced argument to be made for either side there.
However, the moral argument should have been a red herring. As the Australian Financial Review’s Joe Aston points out in this wonderfully excoriating column headlined “God saved Essendon from Andrew Thorburn”, it was the method of his appointment after his role in Australia’s recent banking scandal that is the most amazing aspect of the whole shemozzle.
Thorburn was CEO of NAB, one of Australia’s Big Four banks and the one most hauled over the coals for dodgy practices.
[Thorburn’s] last organisation charged customers – including dead ones – more than $650 million in fees for no service, then in the witness stand he tried to dismiss it as carelessness.
This man of great integrity was so soundly flayed by the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry that he was forced to resign immediately upon the release of its final report.
It caused commissioner Kenneth Hayne… umbrage that “Thorburn sought to assert that no one knew this was happening. The money just kept ‘falling into NAB’s pocket’. He sought to portray the charging of fees for no service as a product of poor systems and carelessness. It was, in his words, ‘just professional negligence’. I cannot and do not accept this.”
The story is one of incredible bungling from start to finish but it did leave me with one burning question. I mean, Aston is right, what large, image-conscious sporting organisation would appoint someone to a high-profile role such as CEO or, perhaps, chair of the board, who has been tainted by the Banking Commission scandal?
Manchester City’s Erling Haaland is so stupidly good he’s clocking the game of football in ways that not even peak Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo seemed capable of.
For some perspective, after scoring twice for City against FC Copenhagen in midweek, he now has 28 goals in 22 Champions League games - nobody else has scored a goal per game, with Bayern’s Gerd Muller coming closest with 34 in 35.
Everybody assumes Haaland will regress to the mean, but perhaps he has no mean. He has scored 14 Premier League goals already this season, which is more than 13 teams have scored. The New York Times (metered $) put it best in their story, headlined: “How Do You Stop Erling Haaland? You Don’t.”
The Citizens play Southampton on Sunday morning at 3am if you want to see for your own eyes this freakish talent.
Massive thanks to Scotty Stevenson, who has come to my rescue over the past couple of weeks with the midweek newsletters. Yesterday’s match report that was never a match report on the White Ferns underlooked series in the West Indies was a beautiful example of how to cover sport passionately and personally, without patronising the athletes or the audience.
The T20 series-clinching game four gave him cause to fear for his immediate health. Given this morning’s match was a dead rubber, there might not have been as much cause for palpitations, but nevertheless the White Ferns took until the final ball to overhaul the Windies 101 ensuring they would leave Antigua knowing they had done nothing the easy way on this tour.
Tour pluses: the spinners Fran Jonas and Eden Carson, plus Maddy Green’s vital contributions with the bat.
Tour minuses: fairly wretched batting all around (albeit in tricky, spin-friendly conditions).
Staggeringly, not once across 10 innings in the series did a team score at a run-a-ball.
On a different topic, Scotty also played a big role in convincing Isaac Ross to make public his heartfelt letter to his Black Fern mother Christine, which has proven to be one of the most popular posts on The Bounce.
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
What I’ll be watching on the box this weekend
Unfortunately we’re going to start with a whinge. The World Cup is here and starts this weekend with an Eden Park triple-header on Saturday followed by three games on Sunday at Okara Park. The big growth area in rugby is the women’s game, so you’d think the host nation, in particular, would give the opening weekend room to breathe, wouldn’t you?
No, we have the two quarter-finals of the NPC on Saturday afternoon and one on Sunday afternoon. Yes, they’ve avoided clashing with the Black Ferns and Wallaroos, but small mercies.
Yes, scheduling is a tough science and yes, there are competing broadcast dynamics at play here, but this just comes across as poor, possibly even a little petty.
A brickbat for New Zealand Cricket too, who share the same broadcast partner as the RWC. Again, it’s not a simple jigsaw puzzle, but this is just a filler series of games, so please try harder.
South Africa v France, 2.15pm; Fiji v England, 4.45pm; NZ v Australia, 7.15. All Auckland, tomorrow, Spark Sport
USA v Italy, 12.45; Japan v Canada, 3.15pm; Wales v Scotland, 5.45pm. All Whangarei, Sunday, Spark Sport
There’ll have to be some serious toggling going on, but it’s cricket and it’s the Black Caps, so who am I kidding when I say I might not tune in.
NZ v Pakistan, Tri-Series Gm 2, tomorrow 7pm; NZ v Bangladesh, Gm 3, Sunday 7pm, both Christchurch, Spark Sport
Honestly, I’ve no idea how I’m going to manage this, but god I love Bathurst. Just turning the telly on and seeing Mt Panorama is enough to invigorate the olfactory senses, with the smell of high-grade fuel, burning rubber and cheap, pre-mixed bourbon wafting deliciously through my lounge.
Bathurst 1000, top 10 shootout, tomorrow 7.05pm; Bathurst 1000, race, Sunday 1.15pm, Sky Sport 5
Sitting down to watch black caps bat against Bangladesh. Williamson has just arrived at the wicket. Two gullies in place straight away. Can he put on a better show than last night’s horror against Pakistan? Notable now that the commentators are at least prepared to say he’s “out of form” and point out his weak points even if they’re still saying he’s our best player.
Funny thing about that appointment of Thorburn; he had been hired by the current chairman to find the next CEO for the Same Old’s and ended up by deciding he was the best man for the job and being appointed himself....Chairman next for the chop, he has made an already all time mess, messier and needs to go.