'Concussion'

A Serious Topic

I've never been great with collision sports. I never wanted to play them because I'm well-attuned to my own pain thank you very much. Some kids love it, but I never wanted to do it. Yeah, I'm wimpy that way - but I'll have you know my brain is intact.

It's amazing how collision sports forms the backbone of national identity in anglophone countries. There's Rugby in the UK with its component nations, South Africa, New Zealand, and then there's Australia where there are two varieties and Australian Rules. There are the two north American varieties of "Football" which are nothing like the beautiful game, both of which feature helmets and protectors and people colliding at great speed. If you speak English, you're in for a sport where people crash into one another over a bit of inflated pigskin.

Perhaps then it took a total outsider to the anglophone culture to pierce the veil of denial surrounding collision sports. This film shows what it all looks like from an outsider's eyes.




What's Good About It

For quite an explosive topic, the film is very stately and careful. It goes a long way towards telling the story of the doctor who discovered CTE, and not going for the sensational angle in the spotlight. The ramifications of the findings are frightening enough, so the film leads you through the chain of events that led to the discovery and disclosure.

It's nice watching a straight up drama. Nobody pulls a gun, nobody drives like a maniac through traffic lights, nobody ducks and takes cover in a hail of bullets, nobody goes to court to make a big speech, nobody leaps into action to do something impossible. It'll told in a very direct, human dimension, and you're grateful for it when you watch it. Will Smith, Alec Baldwin and the rest of the cast put in very controlled, subtle performances.

It's a good film; It's not a great work of cinema, but it's an important film that communicates the discovery of the problem.

What's Bad About It

It's so understated that it gets a little like a telemovie in parts. We get that Dr. Bennet Omalu's private life and professionalize found themselves at a complex juncture, but some of it just eats screen time and doesn't tell us how the NFL is responding.

It's probably the choice of the director not to go too much into the NFL's response to the findings, but it feels a little too balanced towards Dr. Omalu's life. It's a big story so they could have gone for just how large the story is. Instead there's a muted quality to that critical interaction.
It's not bad as such but it is dissatisfying in the context of a very well made film.

What's Interesting About It

The most interesting aspect of the film remains its central subject matter, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Perhaps it's better to have the real doctor discuss this.

Omalu told Fairfax he has watched AFL and NRL on satellite television: "My impression? Those sports remind me of the gladiatorial sports in ancient Rome." Given heavy body contact is a feature of both codes, he categorises them similarly to American football. 

Omalu's opinion is that no one under the age of 18 should play games without rules that forbid all manner of heavy knocks that can culminate, over time, in brain damage. His position is based on the scientifically proven fact that brains remain unformed until that age. 

"Papers that came out this month alone, scientific papers, have shown that if you suffer one concussion, just one, as a child, that you are about 16 times more likely to commit suicide as an adult," he said. 

"Papers that have come out last year have shown that, as a child, the younger you are when you begin to suffer exposure to brain trauma – with or without concussions – the greater the likelihood that you cannot attain your God-given intellectual capacity."
CTE is described as having a strangling effect on the human brain. A by-product of repeated head and body blows, it is caused by a build-up of a protein named tau that essentially overtakes healthy cells.

So that's probably where the discussion should start.
If you look at these collision sports with a fresh eye, it's actually quite disturbing how often you see full-paced collision with people's heads being flung in all kinds of directions. We've known about boxers getting brain degenerative diseases after retirement for many years, perhaps headlined by Muhammed Ali and his Parkinson's Disease. It stands to reason that if you are taking concussion damage on a regular basis for many years, it manifests itself as brain disease.

The most important image might the avocado stone in a glass jar sloshing around in water that Will Smith's Dr. Omalu uses to show us what a brain is, under concussion. He shakes it hard to show the avocado stone slosh and smash into the jar at both ends. It may actually be the world's least surprising diagnosis.

The Joy Of Biff (In The English Speaking World)

The thing is, these collision sports hold such a sacred spot in the culture the anglophone world. It's a real badge honour to have played these games growing up. If you keep playing them as an adult, it's sort of like an extra badge of manhood and masculinity. We judge certain players negatively if we perceive them to be "tackle-shy", which only underlines how much value we place in taking part in the collision aspect of these games.

We value the contact, we love gratuitous bouts of "the biff", we admire the tough men who can run around for 80-odd minutes and inflict this as much as they can take it. If the Super Bowl is the highest rating television event in the USA, it is mirrored by the NRL State of Origin in Australia, and the Rugby World Cup is certainly a festival of hard collisions on the field. It's ingrained into our culture, like some baked-in ingredient of our worldview. Speak English? Expect to understand the beauty of collision sports.

Against that context, this doctor sure has thrown a cultural bomb. As much as I find identity politics passé, it's hard to imagine an anglophone culture denied of its collision sports, or certainly what remains of the the collision sport if the collisions were taken out. It isn't just the football fields of the world that is going to be affected by this understanding.

The CTE diagnosis and spreading understanding has moved to other sports. Major League Baseball changed the rules to do with catchers covering home plate - collisions are to be avoided, and there are now strict rules on where a catcher can position himself. Jorge Posada was moved off from catching in his last season because it was deemed he hashed one too many concussion episodes colliding at home plate. Concussion is turning out to be a serious complication in the administration over collision and contact sports.

This is a far cry from Rivaldo taking a dive clutching his face. And we hold Rivaldo and soccer players who dive in contempt exactly because it's so ingrained in us that players of these collision sports are so damn tough.

You can understand why the NFL resisted the findings as much as it is portrayed in the film. Subsequent studies are finding the phenomenon is quite widespread. 96% of former NFL players have CTE. It's not going to "get better". If one plays a collision sport, one is putting oneself directly at risk of getting brain trauma injury; and that being the case, there really isn't good future with these sports. The NRL's position on CTE for instance is guarded and defensive. Some think the clubs are in denial. Not surprising given the amount of mirth the sport enjoyed around Mario Fenech getting concussed during his career.

The AFL isn't doing much better. The ARU is noticeably silent on the issue. Elsewhere, they're finding the same problems with retired NHL hockey players. Even soccer players are coming to light with their header plays, as being significantly at risk. The diagnosis of Lou Gehrig having had ALS (a.k.a "Lou Gehrig's Disease") is beginning to look doubtful. People have conjectured that it might have been the multiple concussions Gehrig received playing in the days without a batting helmet.

Given what we know today, if I had kids, I wouldn't let them near collision sports, except as a spectator. If enough people - and parents at that - took my view, the future of these sports is doomed.

Melbourne Losers (On A Technicality)

Parramatta Won In 2009!

Melbourne Storm have been stripped of their premierships and points for this season, for breaches of the salary cap. I know some people who would be happy to find out that Parramatta won in 2009 and Manly won in 2007.

NRL chief David Gallop has just announced the extraordinary penalty, after it was uncovered that the club paid $1.7 million to its players outside the cap in the past five years.

The Storm have been stripped of their premierships in 2007 and 2009, three minor premierships and their eight competition points this season. They will not be able to accrue any more points this season, have been fined $500,000 and must pay back $1.1 million in prize money.

"The elaborate lengths that they went to to hide the payments was quite extraordinary," Gallop said. "These payments have allowed them to recruit and retain some of the best players in the game. There's no alternative for the NRL in terms of penalty."

Gallop said that the club had run a long-term system of "two sets of books".

"This morning the Storm representatives have come in and confessed to a well-organised system of paying players outside the cap. On what we know this amounted to $1.7 million in the last five years, including approximately $700,000 in 2010.

"The breakthrough in the investigation was the discovery by the salary cap auditor [Ian Schubert] and his team of a file in a separate room at the Storm to the room that contained the file with the players' contracts."

In statement released by the NRL, it was revealed that "the Storm maintained a dual contract system and the club has today confirmed that side letters promising extra payments were stored in a secret file at the home of the Chief Executive. The accounts were structured in such a way that it would appear the commitments were not apparent to either the Melbourne Storm Board or its owners."

Hmmm, what joy. I'm so glad I don't follow the NRL any more. Would totally suck to be a fan right now. When you start invalidating whole seasons of outcomes, there's no integrity left in the record books for the code. I don't see how you could remain a fan of a code that basically takes away 2 trophies from a team that won and hurting that fan constituency and then awarding it to another bunch of fans who, years later realise their team won even when they lost the grand final and were somehow denied a big celebration. What are the latter supposed to do now? Hold parades in May?

Which all goes to show how artificial it is to have an NRL team in Melbourne, and how salary caps are in the end, no solution to the competitive imbalances inherent in the league.

It's always been very suspect how some of the expansion teams that represent whole cities have dominated the grand finals at some points of NRL and ARL's history. Brisbane, Canberra, Newcastle and Melbourne have each had extended periods of dominance over a rabble of Sydney clubs but you wonder if this happened legitimately; or indeed if these periods of expansion team dominance has actually taken the sport to the national level as hoped. I'm wondering if there really are that many bandwagoneering fans who leapt on to being Melbourne Storm fans when they won the grand final in its second year of existence. I mean, do they think are people that stupid and shallow?

Can a sport even sustain itself in the long term if its cache of fans are a bunch of bandwagoning Shallow-Hals? What kind of hell kind of plan produces such outcomes? I know winning is the only thing, but surely it's not the only, only, only thing on the minds of the viewers. Surely the spectacle and *ahem* beauty* - sheesh I hate to use that word for the game of rugby league - itself of the game should also count for something. Surely the spirit and style in which the game is played and so on must mean something to the die hard fan.

However let's say you can run your comp with Shallow Hal fans as your core constituency. How do the newly minted shallow-Hal fans of Melbourne Storm stick with their club when it ups and loses two Grand Finals in the boardroom, years after the event? Why would they stick around? I really don't know where rugby league can go after this. It's like they sledgehammered the last nail into the coffin and the coffin shattered, exposing the corpse.

Congratulations Parramatta and Manly! You should be so lucky.

Crappy Media Moralism Rules The Day

Sorry To Burst Your Bubble Lady, But I Don't Thinks So


I'm a little legalistic sometimes. I figure if you can't abide by the law, that puts you in the criminal basket. So if somebody's done something criminal, then they should at least be charged, and if the charges stick by the judge, they should get tried. It's fairly simple.

It worries me a little bit that what is happening to Matthew Johns is looking more and more like a media beat-up rather than a desire to get to the bottom of what happened. Now, it has to be said, charges were not laid, and the NZ police have said that they won't reopen the case which seems to say to me that there isn't anything criminal going on.

Thus it worries me considerably to see articles wherein the NSW Rape Crisis Centre chimes in and has this to say.

NSW Rape Crisis Centre Manager Karen Willis, who advises the NRL on sexual assault issues, says the problem of group sex happens across the board.

She said the NRL has already taken steps to address the behaviour of some footballers towards women.

"It's not just footballers...generally a lot of blokes just don't get it," she told Network Ten.

"The NRL...(have)... been the first male-dominated organisation in this country to put up their hand and say we have a problem and we need to do something about it. That work needs to continue."

Ms Willis also urged the men who took part in the New Zealand sexual assault with Matthew Johns to come forward and publicly name themselves.

"If they're in any way sorry for what they've done or understand the impacts of their behaviour, the very first thing they need to do is admit that."

Let's get this right. This Karen Willis is saying these Group Sex incidents are  more common than we've been led to believe. The NRL is actually leading the way educating men against this kind of behaviour; but these Cronulla Sharks players need to put their hands up to take the public punishment that's been meted out to Johns for his part - even though no charges have been laid?

I'm getting more than worried about the tenor of the media response to the allegations. Nobody can claim to know what exactly transpired. Not even Matthew Johns was there from start to finish - he left the room by his own account. The NSW Rape Crisis Centre is dispensing announcements as if Johns and the other players committed rape - which may or may not be true, but the NZ police sure don't think so; yet these other guys have no incentive to come forward and admit they did it. They won't even get to see the inside of a courtroom when the media has billed them guilty as charged.

Why the hell would they admit to anything? For a free kick to the crotch? These people are on drugs.

Okay, what happened was incredibly unsavory, and yes, there are immense differences of power between star athletes and a single 19 year old woman that make it very unpleasant, but I need to see that a crime was actually committed before I kick Matthew Johns any harder. I thought we still lived under a system of presumed innocence until proven guilty. All of this is just jumping the shark as they say.

The sanctimoniousness of the media and the pundits is getting pretty ridiculous.

If Not Consent, Then What?

The hypotheticals that come out of this 'case' are quite disturbing.

Imagine you have a one night stand with a woman, and you part ways and think everything is okay. You got your consent, did the deed as mutually consenting adults; it's not like she screamed rape or you did any rough stuff; she's not even saying date-rape.

Then 6 years later you're lambasted for taking advantage of the woman, even though you secured consent at the time.

The media goes to town on your reputation and without a trial to prove anything, you're branded as guilty as charged and sacked from your job and everybody thinks you're the scum of the earth.

It could happened to you if a woman changes her mind about consent after the fact, and you would have absolutely no recourse. So it seems to me right now, consent isn't consent any more if this 'Clare' woman's version is allowed to stand and destroy Johns' career. I just don't understand why more people aren't disturbed by that.

Why Moralising Is Not Getting Us To Ethical Behaviour

Moralising is an ugly business. You profit on other people's bad behaviour and the prejudices of the stupid and ignorant. Heres' Tracey Grimshaw talking about her editorial stance.

She stated clearly that Johns must answer "the hard questions'' about an incident in 2002 which involved having group sex with a 19-year-old woman in a New Zealand hotel room while on tour with his team, the Cronulla Sharks.

"I wrote the editorial myself,'' Grimshaw explained.

"It was something I wanted to say, and it was decided in the program meeting that day that I would do this.''

The following night, Grimshaw did score the searing 20-minute interview with Johns, who admitted that what he had done was morally wrong.

He has since stepped down from the Nine Network and from his coaching work with the Melbourne Storm.

Grimshaw is considering whether she will continue with editorials on the show.

"I don't see why my view should be any better than anyone else's,'' she said.

"I prefer to just be a conduit for information, but this was obviously something I felt very strongly about.''

Well yes, the Group Sex thing is rather repugnant to the majority of the populace, but I still want to see charges laid and stick before I go further in condemning Johns. In the mean time Ms Grimshaw, the type of editorialising where you dance all over Johns' credibility is actually the unethical thing to do.

Here's another moralising column by one Robyn Riley.

That I find is the saddest indictment of the whole incident. People seem ready to believe almost anyone who has something to say, except the woman.

She's the one person whose claims have been openly questioned.

Some of that may be because of the circumstances, how it took five days for her to make a formal complaint, but is that the only reason?

Maybe it's more to do with the fact that Johns is a likable personality. It also may have something to do with the genuine pain and remorse he has increasingly shown with every appearance on Channel 9.

Whether by accident or manipulation, he has become the real victim in the eyes of many.

Umm, lady, you wouldn't want to be tried in the media with the same sort of information with which Johns has been buried. I'm also a little miffed by this notion/assumption that the woman who claims to be the victim wouldn't possibly lie about this incident, even with testimony to the contrary that's been in the press. While I'm not defending Johns' right to indulge in this sort of sordid behaviour (and maybe one should defend it but that's another topic), it's not like we'd know anything about his sex life if he wasn't a public personality that's just been thrown under the bus.

But you know what? If there's one thing we know about moralists is that they're shameless.

Men Feminism Forgot

Matty, You're An Animal!

This is so wrong on so many levels.

THE comments of one senior NRL representative player indicate how difficult it could be to change the sexual behaviour and attitudes of elite league players.

He warned group sex among NRL players would continue regardless of a warnings from chief executive David Gallop that unsavoury sexual acts would put their contracts at risk. The representative player told the Herald that his colleagues were left stunned by Gallop's hardline stance when no player had been convicted of sexual assault, adding that the caution would quickly be forgotten.

"It's fine for David Gallop to come out and say you can't have group sex but the last thing blokes will be thinking about on a Friday night at the club is David Gallop," said the player, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "I don't know how a chief executive can come out and say we can't have group sex if it's consensual. It's like discrimination because that is a person's private life. It's like saying you can't be homosexual, or you can't have such-and-such sexual preferences. How can he tell us what we can do in our private lives? What if there's more women than guys, is that wrong, too?

"We already have so many rules: we can't drink on these days, we can't go to these places, now we can't have group sex. About the only thing we can do these days is go to club functions, and just hang around other players. That's just isolating us more from the rest of the world, and it could lead to even more violent acts."

Would you look at that! I bolded that word 'discrimination' because it just popped off the page like a firecracker. I love how the language of the victim has been appropriated by these alpha male pituitary cases. They need to be told they're not being discriminated against, they're being told to control and master their libido to resemble societal norms.

Which brings me to the second point. David Gallop seems to assume that there are societal norms and that the NRL start players should know what these norms are. It's laughable that Mr. Gallop thinks these players are within cooee of that cognition. It just isn't the way they think.It's not like anybody knows, unless they run another Kinsey Report, and the NRL sure aren't going to pay for that.

Then there's the threat at the end by the star player that if he and his kind don't get what they want - i.e. 'Group Sex' - then there will be more violence. That had me cracking up in manic laughter. Who's stupid idea was it to market athletes as role models again? No wonder they keep getting betrayed by their very own players. These guys are cavemen.

More to the point, if you love your daughters, don't raise them to hang around footballers. You'll save your family a whole pile of humiliation.