Wales are considering delaying their team selection for Sunday’s match against Scotland at Murrayfield as the wing George North follows return-to-play protocols after suffering two head injuries during the defeat to England last Friday.
North, who missed Wales’s final autumn international last year because of concussion, has been symptom-free this week. Wales are due to announce their side on Wednesday, but the prop Samson Lee is also following return-to-play protocols after being concussed against England.
Wales have been on the defensive since the social media storm that blew up on Friday night after North, who had spent eight minutes off the field in the first half having been kicked in the face, appeared to be momentarily knocked out after a clash of heads with his team-mate Richard Hibbard. He played on having received treatment and it emerged afterwards that Wales’s medical team had not see the incident that caused the injury.
World Rugby launched an immediate investigation, concluding that there had been a system, rather than human, error and Wales’s medical team will have a video-replay facility for the four remaining matches of the Six Nations. The Welsh Rugby Union has stressed that there was no blame attached to its coaching team, who were watching aspects of play on their laptops while North was being treated, or the medics, who were unaware North had suffered another head injury.
Wales’s first media call of the week featured the forwards’ coach Robin McBryde confronting the cameras and notebooks. After reading out a statement and answering a couple of queries, the subject of North was declared out of bounds and three questions were blocked. If it was deemed to be beyond McBryde’s remit, the WRU could have made available its national medical director, Prav Mathema, who late on Monday evening had been interviewed on the union’s website.
The message about blame and exoneration was clearly put, but there was no one to say that a player who had been concussed may be rested against Scotland, even if he continues to be symptom-free in the run-up to selection. It was left to the centre Jamie Roberts, a qualified doctor who suffered a fractured skull playing against Australia in 2008, to declare that the safety of players is paramount.
“George North is completely symptom-free,” said McBryde. “He is going through the return-to-play protocol, as is Samson Lee, and it may be that we delay naming the side. The medical team have already stated that had they seen the second incident, George would have been removed. Since then, procedures have been put in place regarding pitchside review and video replay for the medical team. This has been communicated to World Rugby and we have to learn from this incident so that it does not happen again.”
McBryde said Wales’s management had not seen a replay of the clash of heads with Hibbard, which happened 19 minutes from the end, because they were using their analysts’ laptops to study previous passages of play. “Any break in play is used tactically like that,” he said. “As a coaching group, we are focused on performance. We have learned from that and there will now be the ability to be relaying incidents to the medical team pitchside.”
Roberts said the players had total confidence in the medical team. “A lot has been said and statements have been made,” he said. “The medical staff followed all the protocols after the second incident; it was unfortunate they did not see it. Much has been made of this and rightly so because concussion is a huge part of the game at the moment.
“All the players trust the medical staff. They are an experienced bunch and protocols have been put in place so we can move forward. There will now be medical replays for the medical staff home and away and that will make the game safer for the players. A lot has changed since I fractured my skull in 2008. A question that needs to be asked is why, over the last few years, referees have been able to look at a video replay but medics haven’t.”
Wales expect the full-back Leigh Halfpenny and the outside-half Dan Biggar, who suffered injuries against England, to be fit for Sunday. “Some harsh and honest words have been spoken this week,” said Roberts, “but the Six Nations is too short a tournament to dwell on what happened. We will learn from our mistakes – and there were quite a few.”
