Tackling Rugby: What Every Parent Should Know

On 29 January 2011, Benjamin Robinson was playing rugby for his school. During the match he sustained a concussion but was not taken off, and was allowed to continue with the game, in which he endured a second impact. When play ended, he collapsed, dying two days later as a result of his injuries.

Every week young children are hospitalized on the playing fields of Britain. Yet the subject is rarely investigated, injury data are not systematically collected, and as a result any real attempt to work out how to make youth rugby safer is flawed. Using meticulous, peer-reviewed research, leading public health specialist Allyson M. Pollock sets out the true risks associated with the sport, raising uncomfortable questions for politicians and the educational authorities.

Allyson M. Pollock is Professor of Public Health Research and Policy at Queen Mary, University of London. She set up and directed the Centre for International Public Health Policy at the University of Edinburgh from 2005 to 2011, and prior to that she was Head of the Public Health Policy Unit at UCL and Director of Research and Development at UCL Hospitals NHS Trust. She is the author of NHS plc and coauthor of The New NHS: A Guide. She writes regularly in the Guardian as well as many professional publications.