Love of the Game’s mission is to protect our players and protect our sports. Concussions will continue in many sports and Love of the Game will always raise awareness of existing solutions and opportunities for the management of concussion injuries while constantly promoting the development, trial and roll out of innovative solutions to minimize consequences of concussion injuries while reducing safe recovery time.
Love of the Game is always supportive of changes that increment protection without changing the fundamentals of the sport. In order to protect both players and sports, we are focused on ensuring that any changes are evidence-based and well considered.
We look forward to understanding the reasoning behind the recently announced changes to the laws of tackling in community rugby and will always urge that changes are only made where there is well founded evidence.
Following Wednesday’s meeting of the International Football Association Board, as always, Love of the Game looks forward to studying available evidence to understand the underlying law changes.
We understand that there will always be some risk of concussion in any physical activity, sporting or otherwise.
We share the belief that football must quickly, consistently, and reliably identify concussions when they happen. The pressures on medical staff, particularly in professional sporting environments cannot be overstated. Whilst there is no current multinational consensus on the correct approach to temporary substitutions for suspected concussions in football, and whilst we recognize the complexity of the issue, it must be addressed based on evidence and the player welfare whether they be school and grass roots participants, professionals, or elite players.