By GEOFF STEVENSON
WITHOUT a lot of publicity outside of the Hunter Region, former State of Origin winger James McManus will most likely retire from the game in the upcoming weeks. Like many players exiting, his career will be cut short due to injury. Unlike the majority of injury plagued players, he will retire due to concussion.
McManus is contracted for the 2016 season and at 29 would have seen himself playing professional football for at least another three seasons (as well as a possible belated Scotland debut in next year’s Four Nations). His case has been mirrored by other league players in the past few seasons, the most high profile retiree Liam Fulton, who was joined more recently by Lance Hohaia, Nigel Plum and in 2013 by Josh Miller. Again, it’s a reasonably rare occurrence, despite the understanding that concussion is an emerging issue for clubs and players to monitor and manage, and the frequency of players getting assessed for concussion in NRL rounds.
So, without totally disregarding the ongoing issues around how concussions are managed week-to-week, I want to look more closely at this seemingly low rate of players retiring due to repeated concussions.
All of the above mentioned players retired at the back end of their careers. Miller (28 years old), Hohaia (32) and Plum (32) had all enjoyed a fruitful career of 100+ games. While McManus was contracted for next season, there was no guarantees his career at the Knights would extend beyond then and most of the other players mentioned were entering the phase of their careers where future employment was less and less certain. In short they may have been thinking of retiring anyway.
While all of the players discussed alarming symptoms of concussion that influenced their decision to retire such as short term memory loss, none of them discussed whether they noticed any of these symptoms earlier in their careers. Remember, it is in the codes recent history that players soldiered on and ignored injuries to keep playing.
Likewise we have little info as to what support has been offered to these players on retirement. Will contracts be payed out? Did they already have career transition plans in place? Does the NRL have a plan to assist players retiring from this very controversial injury?
Medical experts claim the safe amount of concussions anyone can have is zero. The reality is NRL players are getting concussed. To ask an emerging or established NRL player in their early 20s to consider retirement to ensure he is a healthy 60-year-old is extremely difficult. A support outside of the player’s club or family almost certainly needs to be in place.
So what would be the most valuable support? My guess would be offering a stable income coupled with support in actually making the decision to retire. Remember if a 24-year-old player is considering retiring from the game, he would be facing losing a decade or more of an often good income. In the past, he probably would have pretended the problem wasn’t there, while his club pressured him to get back on the field.
If the NRL could be responsible for diagnosing possible career ending concussions and fund paying out the player’s full contract, the pressures on the players and subsequent effect on their families will be reduced. If the NRL also committed to paying a player three years of their contract money, even if they are on one- or two-year contracts, all players will feel they have time they will need to shift careers.
Even if it cost $10 million a year, it’d be a life changing program. Either way, we as fans need to accept the retirement of a 20-something player due to concussion as a brave and responsible action.
Twitter – @StevoGeoff
