Here’s some breaking news!!! If you bang your head repeatedly against a really hard object (brick wall, wooden floor, heavy old football, car door, someone’s fist or an 18 stone prop forward), its going to fuck up your head. Holy shit!!! Who’d’a known that????

I’m not making light of head injuries, they are horrible. And for those suffering from long term concussive blows, like boxers, like footballers and certainly like rugby players, the future is not looking great.

This week Kenny Sansom has been confirmed with Alzheimer’s. A footballer, even though he only played for Arsenal. Possibly just ‘random’, because at about 60 there is a percentage of the general population who do develop this horrible disease. But coming after Geoff Astle and Jackie Charlton and now brother Bobby, a pattern starts to emerge which is somewhat at odds with expected probabilities.

Boxing has long been under scrutiny, as should any sport where ‘victory’ comes in the form of a serious concussion. What we call ‘a knockout’.

And now rugby player (and brilliant World Cup winner) Steve Thompson has been diagnosed at 42 years of age, with ‘early onset dementia’. Probably caused by Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is, basically, getting beaten around the head every day for several decades. The poor man now has no recollection whatsoever of that glorious day in 2003 when he, Johnny Wilkinson, Matt Dawson and me (vital role in my lounge) won that World Cup final in Australia.

What’s doubly cruel is that so many old Spurs players can still remember every match, every loss, every tragic disappointment and every failure over entire careers.

But rugby has ‘beefed up’. No more 5 foot 9, 10 stone weaklings. Only BIG boys need apply. Heavyweights but blessed with lightweight speed. Thus tackles now involve earth-shaking collisions at amazing speeds. The scrum has been softened in that no longer do the front rows ‘engage’ with a mighty fucking crash. But still… but still…

In America the NFL suffered a massive class action lawsuit about ‘neglect’ of players who ended up permanently injured or brain-damaged. But that’s America. Litigation Central. Cynics (errrr… that’ll be me then) can’t help wondering whether those players would have heeded health warnings before they signed their multi-million pound a year contracts to play.

Rugby is not a rich sport like Gridiron. And if it changed sufficiently to remove injury potential it would no longer be rugby. Same with boxing. And this is not America where someone is always ‘to blame’. No-one signs up to early onset dementia, it is possibly the worst thing ever. But similarly, no-one plays top level rugby without appreciating its inherent dangers.

I had lunch one day with Ledley King, one of the Spurs Gods. He’s lovely. And has no knees left, so to speak of. No cartilage in any knee-like region. He’ll doubtless be plagued and debilitated by this more with each and every year. But would he sue? Sue Spurs? Sue the League?? No. Because he chose to play and chose to continue playing when any common sense would have dictated otherwise. His choice. Bless him.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx