“Parents need to know when they bring their children to a rugby club that it’s a sport that will look after them.”
This article is written by Progressive Rugby
Former Wasps and Wales flanker Nic Evans, says rugby’s image needs reshaping to ensure that parents don’t lose faith in the sport.
“I think the women’s elite game suffered from taking on a ‘toxic masculinity,’” Nic, who played between 2003 and 2012, said.
“Certainly, when I joined Wasps, I noticed was just how physical training was, how we were always doing contact as though proving we could take as much punishment as the men.”
Evans, who went on to become a respected coach, has experienced concussion up close and personal. She is now a member of the World Rugby Women’s Player Welfare Steering Group.
It had been a hot summer and the ground was hard, while the testimonial fixture she had agreed to play in had an edge. As she crashed forward ball in hand, Evans then found herself briefly in the air and then plummeting downwards without time to stop her head cracking the floor with force.
“I had multiple seizures on the pitch and told I was very aggressive about not wanting to get in the ambulance and spoke all sorts of nonsense to the paramedics apparently,” Evans said.
Thankfully a CT scan confirmed she hadn’t suffered a brain bleed. Despite the unnerving experience Evans was back in training just four weeks later and the incident was never discussed.
“We didn’t talk about concussions. Nobody wanted to be seen as a whinger,” Evans said but noted she suffered with unusually frequent headaches, irritability and mood swings that season.
“That has to change. We need to support positive change so that when parents bring their children to a rugby club, they know that it’s a sport that will look after them.”
As a coach Evans practised what she preached.
While Director of Rugby at the Kings Cross Steelers, the team travelled to Amsterdam as one of the favourites to win the Bingham Cup – the gay World Cup.
Almost immediately things went wrong when her star French centre took a sickening knee to the head leaving him visibly disorientated.
Evans remembers: “His parents had come over from France and took him to a doctor and got a note saying he would be ok to play. It was a tough conversation but our medics weren’t happy so there was no way I was going to put his health at risk. No match is big enough.”