November 14, 2024 • 10 mins
Former All Blacks Doctor - Dr John Mayhew joined D'Arcy Waldegrave to discuss the recent retirement of Tom Robinson from professional rugby.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sports Talk podcast with Duncy Wildergrave
from News Talks. It'd be now the kick out to them.
Robertson is there. He put it right on. The buget
got a nice little role.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Looking at his he's bugget.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Tom Robertson.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Beautifully described he's bugget and what a chap he is
as well, lovely man and he's walked away from the
game that he loved, that he almost reached the top of,
but something wasn't right. Tom Robinson, former blues Ford former
Blues skipper, has talked about his fear of an international
(00:51):
call up. This is a massive guy, arguably a cult
figure in the game, like nearly two meters tall masses
of red hair. Had all the fun he could and
he could play. He was a TLF man when he played.
But on social media last month going you know that's it,
I'm retiring. I'm out now. Just recently he's come out
to go, well, I was actually faking injuries because I
(01:13):
was terrified of my concussion. I didn't want to be
picked for the All Blacks, a dream I've had all
my life. It scared me to think I'd be in
that contact zone. So I feigned some injury in order
to not be selected. Basically, quite the about face from
previous times. Were joined now by doctor John Mayhew from
an All Blacks team. Doctor worries as well, I might
(01:34):
add to talk about Tom Robinson retiring and what he
released to us a few days ago on social media.
Welcome to the show, John, I trust.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
You well very well, Thank you, Darsen.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
This is a curious case, isn't that Tom Robinson coming
out and saying, look, I faked injury so I didn't
get selected for the All Blacks. And this was all
under the fog of concussion that he experienced. He didn't
want to go any further. I've never heard of this before.
What about yourself? They say I'm not injured so they
(02:08):
can carry on playing. This is quite the turn up,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It is? I think you did right there. And I've
had a number of players who have had several head
injuries and then made decisions early in their career to
stop playing football. But they've done that quite publicly and say, look,
I've had two or three concussions. I'm twenty to one
to twenty two. I'm concerned they'll be long term problems
and I'm going to cut my losses now, and that's made.
(02:33):
It's probably quite an intelligent, rational decision. What I find
quite unusual here as the player was hiding that he
was worried about head injury and avoiding playing, but without
telling people and the reason why he was avoiding playing.
So it's a bit unusual. And hopefully he's made a
full recovery from his head injuries and he's possibly made
(02:56):
a very wise decision to avoid further injury and get
on with his life in other areas and not so
for the consequences of repeated head injury. But the mystery is,
you know why he felt that he couldn't discuss that
with his medical advisors or coaches, and I had to
pretend he was injured to avoid selection.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Another story that I won't say will put the frighteners
up people, But again, it brings awareness to the nature
of head injury. I see it as being a positive
that he's done this, not a negative. But maybe that's
what he's thinking. Not that we can tell anyone what
he was thinking, because we simply don't know. But this
is a good news story, you think.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, I think it is. I mean I mean, there's
a number of players I've dealt with over the last
three or four years who've decided to retire because of
you know, what they deem as frequent head injuries. And
you know, fortunately most of them are not brain damage
to any extent, but they're concerned about the future. And
these are often young graduates, you know, who've got other
careers ahead of them, and they've made a decision to say, well, okay,
(04:01):
I'm going to decrease the odds of further damage by
not playing. And I think that's a very acceptal and
very wise thing to do. When they do that, you know,
quite publicly, I'm disappointed that, you know, a player of
this felt that he couldn't be honest with his coaching staff,
medical staff and say, look, you know, I don't want
to play because I'm worried about heat injury and I
(04:23):
think it may be best that I don't carry on playing,
and that'd be the way to do it. And I
think in twenty twenty four, you know, we're much more
aware of the dangers of head injury, and it certainly
except all we've gone past that Marcho phase of you know,
play on. You know, if you can sort of thing,
and I think it's a wise thing to do, so
(04:43):
I applaud him for doing what he's doing, but it's
a shame that he felt that he had to sort
of do it in a surreptitious sort of way.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Dr John Mayhew joining the program. Back in the day,
people would hide injury so they would get selected. How
in this day and a difficult is it to hide
something like head injury? It's blanket covered. Everyone's very very
well aware of concussion of head knocks, of how players
are affected. They've got video. But is it an easy
(05:12):
enough thing to mask? I don't know why you would,
but is it easy enough to mask in this day
and age.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, it's certainly. At the professional level now, it's pretty
hard to get away with a player playing with head
injury because there are protocols in place all the training
and games of videos, so it's very hard to avoid
you know, that are being diagnosed with a head injury.
So I think that's unlikely. I mean, certainly at lower
levels or a training where there's no video assessment and
(05:39):
things like that, injuries can occur. And often I still
see patients who say, look, I felt good at the game,
but you know later on I had a headache, and
then you go through the tape and you find that
you know they may have had a head injury, and
you're dealt with accordingly. But I think at the professional
level now players don't try to hide head injury. It's
(06:02):
certainly at lower levels and even worse at visiting you
a rugby levels, players sometimes try to hide things and
unfortunately sometimes the appearance and coaches you know, go along
with that as well.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
There is a standard standdown period for players, but I'm
presuming that head injury takes on and concussion a number
of different forms. So to have a blanket stand down
period is that idea? Is that accurate? Does that work
for you the average rugby player, not even your average bloke.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
What you're saying is definitely correct that I was in
a working party with acc and we came up with
some guidelines for non professional sportsmen across all the sporting codes,
and we came up with a minimum of three weeks
standout if anyone suffers a head injury, and then they
needed to be cleared by a medical professional, a doctor,
(06:56):
not a physio. Now that what we've got to deal
with here, Todart is it's very hard for the average
sportsmen to get in to see a doctor to get
access to all these neuropsychometric testing. So we made a
pragmatic decision which is the best for all concerned. And
what we're trying to say there that if you have
a hen injury, it's going to be a minimum of
three weeks you're then going to have a conversation with
(07:18):
a medical professional who assesses you and decides whether you
can return to play or not. So it's not ideal,
I quite agree, but it's the best option we've got
at the moment.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
So with the coverage that they get and the attention
to detail that all blacks get, this standdown period is
good because it is carried on with afterwards. They carry
on monitoring this. But for your average Joe, just tell
someone says you're okay.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Don't Yeah. Basically, you know, you've got to think the
realistic thing. There's thousands of young footballers and rugby league
players that play every weekend and there's no way that
every of them can be accessed at the level that
all blacks and professional players can be. So there had
to be a practical solution which did the most good
for the most people. Most head injuries across the board
(08:10):
resolve in seven to ten days. Hence the eleven days
stand down the professional game as a minimum, but some
will last longer, some will last less than that, so
we've had to come up with a pragmatic and practical list.
It's by no means perfect, and there'll be a small
subgroup of players who will need a long longer period
of time off, or as we discussed earlier, it may
(08:30):
need to give up playing contact sport completely.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And there's a number of different ways to be concusst.
I've experienced myself with the spinal compression that I had,
but as a blow to their head, it just spine.
There's a number of different ways you can bring concussion
on yet.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Yeah, exactly, But the end of the day, the cause
of the cogation is transient damage to the neurone to
the brain cells and the brain cells in a way,
if they're damaged, it doesn't really matter the exact mechanism.
The damage is done, and then we have to deal
with that.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Dr John Mayhewn just before we go, the technology, the
advance and understand around concussion not full proof yet, but
in your mind, getting closer to sorting this issue out
as far as finding out how you got your concussion,
how long it's going to last. As medical up now
with what's going on in concussion, they have a long
(09:22):
way to go.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Or yeah, I mean, I think there's certainly we're moving forward,
and I think New Zealand rugby has been very proactive
and assessment of concussion and management of that and it
issuing a lot of research programs and there's mostly doing
more than most other sports are doing New Zealand, and
certainly people can get head injuries and sort of roll
(09:44):
of blading and ice hockey and things like that where
there's no research going on. The finger gets pointed at
rugby the whole time, but ironically it's the sport that's
doing the most to try and make their sport safest
than the other sports can learn from the information glean there.
So I think, you know, there's a lot of research
done by sporting bodies and by medical bodies, and we're
(10:04):
trying to make the game as safe as we possibly can.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
For more from Sports Talk, listen live to News Talk
zeb from seven pm weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sports Talk podcast with Duncy Wildergrave
from News Talks. It'd be now the kick out to them.
Robertson is there. He put it right on. The buget
got a nice little role.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Looking at his he's bugget.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Tom Robertson.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Beautifully described he's bugget and what a chap he is
as well, lovely man and he's walked away from the
game that he loved, that he almost reached the top of,
but something wasn't right. Tom Robinson, former blues Ford former
Blues skipper, has talked about his fear of an international
(00:51):
call up. This is a massive guy, arguably a cult
figure in the game, like nearly two meters tall masses
of red hair. Had all the fun he could and
he could play. He was a TLF man when he played.
But on social media last month going you know that's it,
I'm retiring. I'm out now. Just recently he's come out
to go, well, I was actually faking injuries because I
(01:13):
was terrified of my concussion. I didn't want to be
picked for the All Blacks, a dream I've had all
my life. It scared me to think I'd be in
that contact zone. So I feigned some injury in order
to not be selected. Basically, quite the about face from
previous times. Were joined now by doctor John Mayhew from
an All Blacks team. Doctor worries as well, I might
(01:34):
add to talk about Tom Robinson retiring and what he
released to us a few days ago on social media.
Welcome to the show, John, I trust.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
You well very well, Thank you, Darsen.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
This is a curious case, isn't that Tom Robinson coming
out and saying, look, I faked injury so I didn't
get selected for the All Blacks. And this was all
under the fog of concussion that he experienced. He didn't
want to go any further. I've never heard of this before.
What about yourself? They say I'm not injured so they
(02:08):
can carry on playing. This is quite the turn up,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It is? I think you did right there. And I've
had a number of players who have had several head
injuries and then made decisions early in their career to
stop playing football. But they've done that quite publicly and say, look,
I've had two or three concussions. I'm twenty to one
to twenty two. I'm concerned they'll be long term problems
and I'm going to cut my losses now, and that's made.
(02:33):
It's probably quite an intelligent, rational decision. What I find
quite unusual here as the player was hiding that he
was worried about head injury and avoiding playing, but without
telling people and the reason why he was avoiding playing.
So it's a bit unusual. And hopefully he's made a
full recovery from his head injuries and he's possibly made
(02:56):
a very wise decision to avoid further injury and get
on with his life in other areas and not so
for the consequences of repeated head injury. But the mystery is,
you know why he felt that he couldn't discuss that
with his medical advisors or coaches, and I had to
pretend he was injured to avoid selection.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Another story that I won't say will put the frighteners
up people, But again, it brings awareness to the nature
of head injury. I see it as being a positive
that he's done this, not a negative. But maybe that's
what he's thinking. Not that we can tell anyone what
he was thinking, because we simply don't know. But this
is a good news story, you think.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, I think it is. I mean I mean, there's
a number of players I've dealt with over the last
three or four years who've decided to retire because of
you know, what they deem as frequent head injuries. And
you know, fortunately most of them are not brain damage
to any extent, but they're concerned about the future. And
these are often young graduates, you know, who've got other
careers ahead of them, and they've made a decision to say, well, okay,
(04:01):
I'm going to decrease the odds of further damage by
not playing. And I think that's a very acceptal and
very wise thing to do. When they do that, you know,
quite publicly, I'm disappointed that, you know, a player of
this felt that he couldn't be honest with his coaching staff,
medical staff and say, look, you know, I don't want
to play because I'm worried about heat injury and I
(04:23):
think it may be best that I don't carry on playing,
and that'd be the way to do it. And I
think in twenty twenty four, you know, we're much more
aware of the dangers of head injury, and it certainly
except all we've gone past that Marcho phase of you know,
play on. You know, if you can sort of thing,
and I think it's a wise thing to do, so
(04:43):
I applaud him for doing what he's doing, but it's
a shame that he felt that he had to sort
of do it in a surreptitious sort of way.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Dr John Mayhew joining the program. Back in the day,
people would hide injury so they would get selected. How
in this day and a difficult is it to hide
something like head injury? It's blanket covered. Everyone's very very
well aware of concussion of head knocks, of how players
are affected. They've got video. But is it an easy
(05:12):
enough thing to mask? I don't know why you would,
but is it easy enough to mask in this day
and age.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Well, it's certainly. At the professional level now, it's pretty
hard to get away with a player playing with head
injury because there are protocols in place all the training
and games of videos, so it's very hard to avoid
you know, that are being diagnosed with a head injury.
So I think that's unlikely. I mean, certainly at lower
levels or a training where there's no video assessment and
(05:39):
things like that, injuries can occur. And often I still
see patients who say, look, I felt good at the game,
but you know later on I had a headache, and
then you go through the tape and you find that
you know they may have had a head injury, and
you're dealt with accordingly. But I think at the professional
level now players don't try to hide head injury. It's
(06:02):
certainly at lower levels and even worse at visiting you
a rugby levels, players sometimes try to hide things and
unfortunately sometimes the appearance and coaches you know, go along
with that as well.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
There is a standard standdown period for players, but I'm
presuming that head injury takes on and concussion a number
of different forms. So to have a blanket stand down
period is that idea? Is that accurate? Does that work
for you the average rugby player, not even your average bloke.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
What you're saying is definitely correct that I was in
a working party with acc and we came up with
some guidelines for non professional sportsmen across all the sporting codes,
and we came up with a minimum of three weeks
standout if anyone suffers a head injury, and then they
needed to be cleared by a medical professional, a doctor,
(06:56):
not a physio. Now that what we've got to deal
with here, Todart is it's very hard for the average
sportsmen to get in to see a doctor to get
access to all these neuropsychometric testing. So we made a
pragmatic decision which is the best for all concerned. And
what we're trying to say there that if you have
a hen injury, it's going to be a minimum of
three weeks you're then going to have a conversation with
(07:18):
a medical professional who assesses you and decides whether you
can return to play or not. So it's not ideal,
I quite agree, but it's the best option we've got
at the moment.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
So with the coverage that they get and the attention
to detail that all blacks get, this standdown period is
good because it is carried on with afterwards. They carry
on monitoring this. But for your average Joe, just tell
someone says you're okay.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Don't Yeah. Basically, you know, you've got to think the
realistic thing. There's thousands of young footballers and rugby league
players that play every weekend and there's no way that
every of them can be accessed at the level that
all blacks and professional players can be. So there had
to be a practical solution which did the most good
for the most people. Most head injuries across the board
(08:10):
resolve in seven to ten days. Hence the eleven days
stand down the professional game as a minimum, but some
will last longer, some will last less than that, so
we've had to come up with a pragmatic and practical list.
It's by no means perfect, and there'll be a small
subgroup of players who will need a long longer period
of time off, or as we discussed earlier, it may
(08:30):
need to give up playing contact sport completely.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And there's a number of different ways to be concusst.
I've experienced myself with the spinal compression that I had,
but as a blow to their head, it just spine.
There's a number of different ways you can bring concussion
on yet.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Yeah, exactly, But the end of the day, the cause
of the cogation is transient damage to the neurone to
the brain cells and the brain cells in a way,
if they're damaged, it doesn't really matter the exact mechanism.
The damage is done, and then we have to deal
with that.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Dr John Mayhewn just before we go, the technology, the
advance and understand around concussion not full proof yet, but
in your mind, getting closer to sorting this issue out
as far as finding out how you got your concussion,
how long it's going to last. As medical up now
with what's going on in concussion, they have a long
(09:22):
way to go.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Or yeah, I mean, I think there's certainly we're moving forward,
and I think New Zealand rugby has been very proactive
and assessment of concussion and management of that and it
issuing a lot of research programs and there's mostly doing
more than most other sports are doing New Zealand, and
certainly people can get head injuries and sort of roll
(09:44):
of blading and ice hockey and things like that where
there's no research going on. The finger gets pointed at
rugby the whole time, but ironically it's the sport that's
doing the most to try and make their sport safest
than the other sports can learn from the information glean there.
So I think, you know, there's a lot of research
done by sporting bodies and by medical bodies, and we're
(10:04):
trying to make the game as safe as we possibly can.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
For more from Sports Talk, listen live to News Talk
zeb from seven pm weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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