Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/tLIrv6XIfMg   Players who tackle their opponents by leading with the shoulders rugby-style rather than with the head football-style sustain fewer and less forceful impacts.  This is the conclusion of a sports medicine study at West Virginia’s Marshall University to be presented next week to the American Academy of Neurology’s Sports Concussion conference.   The study focused on 20 football players and 10 rugby players during practice season play.  The serious impacts they sustained and the impact forces were quantitated by helmet and mouthguard sensors.   The shoulder-first rugby tacklers sustained significantly fewer impacts with significantly lower impact forces compared with the head-first football tacklers.  The average football-associated impact force was 63 X g, 3 times greater than the average rugby-associated force at 21X g.   If brain-damaging tackling continues to be permitted in high school and college sports at all, mandating shoulder-first tackling may be a first step t