Player Power Keeps Heart Scans Out of Rugby League
Plans to offer heart scans following two deaths in the last eight months have been scuppered by opposition from Super League players
Plans to offer heart scans following the deaths of Wakefield's Adam Watene and Leon Walker in the last eight months have been scuppered by opposition from Super League players. The Rugby Football League began researching the possibility of introducing a heart-screening program soon after Watene's death last autumn. The Cook Islands prop was 31, and an inquest confirmed cardiomyopathy – which is often hereditary – as the cause of his collapse during a personal training session.
Walker was only 20 when he died during a reserve team game against the Celtic Crusaders in Maesteg on 22 March. An inquest was opened after an inconclusive post-mortem revealed only that he had not suffered any trauma or rugby-related injury, and his parents are now thought to have received the results.
Geoff Burrow, the secretary of the Rugby League Players Association, confirmed today that the possibility of a pre-emptive testing program has been floated during the union's quarterly meetings with the RFL. "We haven't got to a stage of having an official position on it yet, but when we have spoken to players about it they have seemed very reluctant to agreeing to anything like that," he said.
One Super League coach said: "The players are worried that if a scan showed any problem, they would effectively be unemployable for a club because of the insurance ramifications, however remote the chance of anything serious happening. On that basis, I think they'd rather take the chance."
The RFL may extend its testing of junior representative teams, with all players in the England under-15s and under-16s already being screened. But there is no realistic chance of the governing body following the example of football, where cardiac testing has been mandatory for all players since August 2008 under a Uefa regulation introduced following the deaths of Marc-Vivien Foé, Antonio Puerta and Phil O'Donnell.
Meanwhile, Wigan are confident that they will be unaffected by Dave Whelan's decision to transfer ownership of the JJB Stadium to the town's Premier League football club. Whelan announced this week that Wigan Athletic will own the renamed DW Stadium from 1 August, but has also extended Wigan Warriors' lease to play there until the late 2050s, as he promised when he sold his majority shareholding in the rugby club to Ian Lenagan in October 2007.
Terry Matterson has signed a two-year extension to his contract as Castleford's coach, which now runs until the end of 2011.ends...
Walker was only 20 when he died during a reserve team game against the Celtic Crusaders in Maesteg on 22 March. An inquest was opened after an inconclusive post-mortem revealed only that he had not suffered any trauma or rugby-related injury, and his parents are now thought to have received the results.
Geoff Burrow, the secretary of the Rugby League Players Association, confirmed today that the possibility of a pre-emptive testing program has been floated during the union's quarterly meetings with the RFL. "We haven't got to a stage of having an official position on it yet, but when we have spoken to players about it they have seemed very reluctant to agreeing to anything like that," he said.
One Super League coach said: "The players are worried that if a scan showed any problem, they would effectively be unemployable for a club because of the insurance ramifications, however remote the chance of anything serious happening. On that basis, I think they'd rather take the chance."
The RFL may extend its testing of junior representative teams, with all players in the England under-15s and under-16s already being screened. But there is no realistic chance of the governing body following the example of football, where cardiac testing has been mandatory for all players since August 2008 under a Uefa regulation introduced following the deaths of Marc-Vivien Foé, Antonio Puerta and Phil O'Donnell.
Meanwhile, Wigan are confident that they will be unaffected by Dave Whelan's decision to transfer ownership of the JJB Stadium to the town's Premier League football club. Whelan announced this week that Wigan Athletic will own the renamed DW Stadium from 1 August, but has also extended Wigan Warriors' lease to play there until the late 2050s, as he promised when he sold his majority shareholding in the rugby club to Ian Lenagan in October 2007.
Terry Matterson has signed a two-year extension to his contract as Castleford's coach, which now runs until the end of 2011.ends...
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