Rugby union is to introduce flashing LED mouthguards that light up when a player suffers a significant head impact during a match. The mouthguard will flash red if the impact is severe enough to potentially cause a concussion. The referee will then stop play and the player will go off for a head injury assessment.<\/p>\n
Dr Lindsay Starling, a science and medical manager at World Rugby, said the new system would debut at the Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup, which begins next week, before being rolled out across the men\u2019s and women\u2019s elite game. \u201cMatch officials and players will be able to see that this player has sustained a big head impact because their mouth guard is flashing red,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it will create awareness about head injuries and concussions in the stands and for fans at home, being able to see it on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Eanna Falvey, the chief medical officer at World Rugby, said every player at the Women\u2019s World Cup would be wearing the new mouthguards, apart from two who wear braces. He said that was significantly higher than for the men\u2019s game, in which around 85% of players wear smart mouthguards<\/a>.<\/p>\n He said he hoped all players would embrace the new technology. \u201cIt would be great for the game. But personal choice is an important thing, autonomy is an important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n The mouthguards work by measuring how much a player\u2019s head moves up and down and rotates during a collision. When it registers an acceleration above 75g and 4,500 radians per second squared for men \u2013 and 65gs and 4,500 rad\/s2 for women \u2013 it will start flashing.<\/p>\n That is an improvement on the current system, which uses Bluetooth to alert the match day doctor and can take several seconds to arrive.<\/p>\n Starling also the mouthguards could also help identify foul play, but that there were caveats. \u201cThere is a world in which the data from the mouthguard can start to come into play a little bit more with foul play,\u201d she said. \u201cBut what everybody needs to understand that in the same way a player can get concussed from a pretty small head impact, foul play [can have occurred] without registering anything substantial.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we need to be careful not to do is over-rely on the data or put too much power in the hands of the data. Data is incredibly powerful, but in this case the data might not tell 100% of the picture.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Starling said broadcasters had asked World Rugby if they could show the G-forces of big tackles during matches, but they had been turned down. She indicated that may change over time. \u201cIt\u2019s classified as medical data about a player, and so therefore we can\u2019t share those numbers anywhere,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we\u2019re working with the players to get them on board to want to share that information.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a very fine line between big and being safe and correct and the player being looked after. Because big isn\u2019t always good, sometimes it\u2019s bad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rugby union is to introduce flashing LED mouthguards that light up when a player suffers a significant head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-336090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115010934436256289","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}