Hey guys, Andy here. My current project, on concussion in sport, unfortunately remains headlines news last weekend with Tongan player Eli Katoa experiencing seizures at the Pacific Championships match between Tonga and New Zealand last weekend.
Eli Katoa started the match despite a significant blow to the head from the shoulder of a team mate during the warm up and consequently suffered two more blows to the head during the match. He underwent and passed a Head Injury Assessment (HIA), by the team doctors, after the warm up incident and he subsequently passed his second HIA, by an independent doctor, after the first blow during the match. He returned to the pitch only to be hit in the head for a third time during the second half at which stage he was mandatorily removed from the field. While on the sidelines he then experienced seizures before being rushed to hospital where he was operated on to drain fluid from his brain.
Tonga coach Kristian Woolf defended the team’s doctors after the game,
“We’ve got two very experienced doctors there. They’ve done their usual HIA. He’s passed all that and passed all that well. My job is not to question doctors. They were both comfortable with that and comfortable with him coming back onto the field. So I don’t think there’s anything to worry about there in terms of the process.”
As a human being, let alone a sports fan, it is hard not to be angry at this series of events that allowed someone clearly unfit to take the field not once but twice and who was only removed at the third time of asking. Woolf’s defence, hiding behind the team doctors and the process, is equally incredulous; there were multiple occasions to remove Eli Katoa from the pitch that were not taken which led to the player being hospitalised. It is feared he may have played his last game aged 25 years old.
With sport being increasingly commercialised and fighting for attention and eyeballs, teams, coaches and sporting administrators want their best players on the field. They want their best players performing incredible feats of athleticism to clip and use as visual content to attract more viewers and, in turn, generate more revenue. However there are also the issues of player welfare and duty of care which is the moral, and legal, obligation to act in a way that prevents foreseeable harm to others. In professional sport it is increasingly hard to see how duty of care co-exists with commercialisation and not reach the conclusion that the two are not contradictory forces.
Being a veteran I used to upset people in the fashion world when I used to say that ‘fashion does not matter’, insofar that clothes are not as important or life changing as losing a limb or being killed. I stand fast on this opinion and the same applies in this instance; sport does not matter in the grand scheme of things compared to your health and life. I say these things as someone who loves both style and sport; they are fantastic elements to life, but they are not as important as life itself.
This is one of my underlying aims when it comes to this project on concussion; sport, and in this instance rugby, must do better. This project is not against or anti- sport. I am not suggesting not competing or not taking part. If your dream is to be a professional athlete, go for it. Rather player welfare and protection must be the priority; the most important thing in sport can not be profit.
Just as elite levels of skill will be shared across the internet, so will elite levels of dereliction of duty. Professional sporting bodies are commercial entities often answerable only to themselves. However in regards to players, sporting bodies are like all other workplaces; they rely on new blood to replace the old. Where do the majority of new players come from; kids who play sports at schools. And schools are answerable not to sporting bodies but to parents. What happens if schools no longer offer this sport or that activity out of health and safety and a responsibility to parents who do not wish to see their children injured or, heavens forbid, worse?
For The Love Of The Game, a project on concussion in sport, is being undertaken with Sam Peters, award-winning author and former journalist and founder of Concussed Media.
andybarnham
I am a portrait photographer based in Cheltenham, UK. Born in Hong Kong to a Chinese mum and British dad, I had an international upbringing while I educated in the UK. I started photography as a hobby while serving as an officer in the British Army.
After my service I turned this passion into a career and became immersed in London's sartorial scene. I am now focusing my camera on portraiture and using this eye for detail which was refined over ten years. As a former Royal Artillery officer it is only fitting I shoot with a Canon camera.
