There was plenty of Twitter discussion about Piri Weepu’s concussion this weekend – in case you missed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq7h7kvcQEg.

Although the injury looked traumatic, I would argue that this is a "preferable" concussion.

"Perferable" in the sense that there was absolutely NO DEBATE as to whether Weepu was concussed or not: the player’s obvious Loss of Conciousness (LOC) confirmed his diagnosis for not just the team medical staff, but also for the fans and spectators watching the game.

The problematic concussion cases in collision sports are those that do NOT present with classic signs of concussion – players feel "foggy" or out of sorts either during or after a game. The macho nature of rugby would often not permit such lowly symptoms to warrant a player missing training or match. Yet research has indicated that repeated knocks of this, less obvious nature can have dangerous long term effects for players. Thus, one should err on the side of caution with concussion and follow the mantra of leading researchers in this field currently: "If in doubt, sit ’em out!"

Why would the authors of this article include "injury-hit" as a prefix to Stormers, in article headline? According to UK-based soccer statistical group, Fink Tank, "player availability" is a critical determinant of a team’s success. Simply, the more players you have unavailable, the less your chances of a successful result. 

By implication in this article headline, the favourable result of the Stormers could have been even MORE favourable had they had all of their number one players available. 

Simple point made, but this flies in the face of those who claim that injury prevention can’t be considered part of "sports performance". Furthermore, it highlights the importance of a brilliant medical staff for a team.

As South Africans, we tend to assume that we follow the trends of countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Not so in this case…

The medical section of the South African Rugby Union (SARU) we ahead of their time of using scientific evidence to revise scrum laws within South Africa. Just four months later, SARU’s brave call has been vindicated, with the IRB following suit. 

For a full link to the paper where these evidence is outlined, go to the following link: http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/2/e002475.full.pdf+html. In short, this paper showed that Rugby-related catastrophic injuries occur more often in adult (senior) players than in junior players in South Africa. The hooker playing position and scrum phase of play also account for a disproportionately large amount of all catastrophic injuries. Given the fact that the scrum occurs relatively infrequently when compared to a tackle event, the scrum would appear to carry a very high inherent risk of catastrophic injury. Almost all of these scrum injuries occurred either in the engagement phase or by a collapsed scrum (caused by a poor engagement).

Reasons for the higher rate of catastrophic injury in adult players could be related to the “weekend warrior” phenomenon. This describes the player who does not attend practice during the week and arrives 10 minutes before kick off on Saturday afternoon. The under-19 scrum law variations, no pushing more than 1.5 metres and no wheeling of the scrum, also make the scrum environment safer for junior players.