In France, all sports combined, at least 100,000 concussions are diagnosed each year. Amateur rugby is particularly affected by this scourge, which is still too often underestimated by athletes and professionals.
More and more players are daring to break the taboo to warn about concussions which affect many sports, in particular rugby. A real health scourge that affects both professional and amateur athletes.
In the amateur environment, the means are not sufficient to detect these concussions. The wounded very often find themselves isolated in front of city doctors who are not trained to recognize the symptoms from which they suffer. This is what happened to Theo, 19, victim of a frontal impact on a tackle. The beginning, for him, of a long Way of the Cross: “A few months after my injury, I started having trouble sleeping, I was dizzy, I was losing my memory. It lasted a good year like that, not being able to do anything anymore”says the young man, who, faced with the incomprehension of the doctors and the mockery, ends up falling into depression.
“I was sent to the right, to the left, until the day when a doctor told me to walk in his room, which I did. He concluded that I had nothing, as if I I was a liar when I only wanted to be able to run, go back to the field to play rugby again”he explains.
“You break your collarbone: you show the radio, it shows, you are taken seriously. There, it is invisible and you pass for a liar.”
Théo, amateur rugby playerfranceinfo
Today, eight years after his injury, Theo is still wandering from doctor to doctor to treat his pain, as well as unexplained loss of balance. He is sometimes forced, when driving, to stop at the side of the road to collect his thoughts. He was never able to play rugby again.
Isolation, lack of support…
Jean-Baptiste, 34, suffered from “second impact syndrome”, that is to say a first concussion: “Nobody saw anything, I played my match normally”. Then, with a second shock a few weeks later: “There, towards the end of the match, I suffered a head clearance, I felt a sharp pain in my jaw, I finished the match without remembering how, I had to continue with another match but I was seized with vomiting”.
Jean-Baptiste ends up in the hospital, his vital prognosis is even engaged for a time. Today, six months later, after a long rehabilitation, he is still on sick leave, a little lost in his daily life and does not have a driving license.
At least 100,000 cases per year
It is these numerous testimonies that prompted the lawyer Antoine Semeria to create the Alerte Commotions association, which will hold its very first general meeting on June 16th. Its goal: to provide victims with non-legal aid. “Create a discussion group so that people who are victims of concussions, from different sports, can meet, tell their story, their problems without taboos, without fear of the gaze of others”says the lawyer.
Also advise. “The testimonies that I receive are victims of concussions who have no medical follow-up, who do not know where to go. It is worrying. We must go faster, carry out awareness-raising actions”, he adds. The number of concussions, all sports combined in France, is estimated at at least 100,000 cases per year, “a figure constantly increasing and certainly underestimated for a real public health issue”says the eminent neurologist Jean-François Chermann.
“We can no longer leave the victims alone. They must be able to share their daily lives. We must carry out prevention and awareness-raising actions.”
Antoine Semeria, lawyer and founder of the association Alerte Commotionsfranceinfo
In rugby, one of the first sports to become aware of the problem, initiatives are regularly launched. This week, again, the international federation announces new experiments in several countries around the world to lower the height of tackles in amateur rugby: ban on tackles above the sternum. But the feedback will not take place before the beginning of 2025.
So, in the meantime, what if we started by simply applying the rules of the game? This is what Philippe Chauvin asks in his book Dying is part of the game, published by Editions du Rocher. One of his children, Nicolas, died in 2018, at the age of 18, as a result of an illicit double tackle during a match with the hopes of Stade Français against Bordeaux, the 2e Torn cervical vertebra.
“The rules we have are certainly imperfect but sufficient to protect the players if they are applied. And when there is a fault, a dangerous gesture, the sanctions must be really dissuasiveasks Philippe Chauvin. Three weeks suspension when you almost killed someone is just ridiculous. If you go to 20 weeks, you affect the whole economic chain and, there, it becomes much more painful”, he continues.
“Do nothing dangerous or reckless”
And Philippe Chauvin is fighting today for a very simple, but essential sentence, to be copied by all members on the licenses. This sentence is engraved in the rules of the game, it is rule 9, paragraph 11: players must not do anything that is dangerous or imprudent for others.
“I think that copying it, and I’m talking about all the members – players, managers, coaches – would put it back in everyone’s mind that rugby is not a sport of destruction, which we still hear in certain speeches by coaches, presidents”he recommends.
“By enforcing this rule, we would reassure families, we would have more members and we would find a sport of avoidance, an intelligent sport”, adds this rugby lover. A request made several times to the various French authorities, remained a dead letter for the moment.