Melissa Dowd’s son Hayden Gregory, 10, plays for the South Eastern Seagulls and daughter Kailee Gregory, 13, for the La Perouse Panthers. Dowd said the testing gave her peace of mind after a player in one of her son’s games last year suffered a concussion. She said using the technology was preferable to a proposed blanket ban on tackling for kids under 12 that was opposed by the association.
“You’re not sending them back out too early. And you could have a kid that doesn’t take as long [to recover] and then they’re not missing out on their grand final. It’s taking the guessing game out of it,” she said.
Former Rabbitohs player turned technology journalist Stephen Fenech said a system such as NeuroFlex could have changed the outcome for his brother, South Sydney legend Mario Fenech, who developed early onset dementia.
“As a result of his continued head knocks his short-term memory is now pretty much gone. He can still remember everybody’s name, it isn’t that bad,” Fenech said. “But he can’t remember where he parked his car, he’ll ask me a couple of times how my family is in the same conversation.”
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Fenech believes the technology, which has been trialled in Super Rugby and the 2022 FIFA World Cup, should be taken up by the NRL and other contact sports.
“Rather than change the rules of the game, let’s be proactive and get everyone’s baseline and test them on those rare occasions when you get a head injury,” he said.
McLoughlin said more data was needed to understand how contact sport is connected to cognitive conditions such as dementia, but there’s “obviously a link between multiple head knocks and increased risk of those conditions later on”.
“I don’t want there to be an overreaction. For example, there’s the school in Sydney where the girls are banned from playing AFL. Some of those decisions are probably overreaching at the moment because we don’t have enough information,” he said.
“If you look at the benefits of playing sport for your general health and engagement in the community, it could far outweigh any risks for problems later on.”
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