LESAProject

Player welfare in the rugby community continues to be a hot topic these days.   Our own Bleacher Report investigative series has outlined some of the major issues within the public debate and has dealt with some of the most important research—or lack there of—in regards to concussion management in rugby. Click here for Part One of Bleacher Report's Player Welfare Series. Click here for Part Two of Bleacher Report's Player Welfare Series. As our ongoing reporting has discussed, the recent confirmation of the rugby's first-ever CTE diagnosis, has shaken the community further and has led to an even more vigorous discussion around what ...

"Rugby is not NFL Football." That was the claim made by an International Rugby Board (IRB) representative recently. The comment came in response to a series of investigative reports from Ben Heather of New Zealand's Dominion Post. Mr. Heather has joined others, including your humble correspondent here at Bleacher Report, in looking into the validity of that statement. Rugby versus Football Numbers: An Inconvenient Truth   Rapid Player Weight Gain: A Game for All Sizes? Brain Trauma in Rugby: Asking Difficult Questions Only two weeks ago, I posted part one of this series in which I looked at the damning comments put forward by Scotland international ...

The damning revelations that came to light this week, courtesy of veteran Scotland winger Rory Lamont, were revealed amidst a flurry of troubling reports concerning player trauma in contact sports; many of which are beginning to cause increasing concern within the global rugby community. Your humble correspondent was also in the middle of conducting in-depth research into player welfare in rugby when Lamont's comments in The Scotsman pierced the tragic silence that seems to cover these issues in the modern game. I told them [medics and coaches] I couldn’t play and was looking at pulling myself out. I had done it once before, ...

Tongan head coach Mana Otai has made a serious and controversial set of allegations in regard to how the International Rugby Board (IRB) officiates matches involving Pacific Island nations.Following Tonga's dramatic and violent Pacific Nations Cup contest with Canada on June 8 in Kingston, Ontario, the Tongan coach had strong words regarding the decisions made in that match specifically, and in regard to matches involving Pacific Island nations in general.Otai's comments are all the more controversial because of the violent nature of the match and the actions of his team's players, which were caught on video. The wild fixture, in ...

For any NHL fan, the stories of the trials every young player goes through to realize his dreams are the stuff of legend. T.V. commercials glamorize fitness sessions with teenage superstars, who conduct their dry-land training with the help of an army of personal trainers and the best technology sports science can offer.But behind the hype and the images that are routinely beamed into hockey households across North America, there are literally thousands of individual stories of players and families whose dreams never came true.An effort to demystify the modern NHL dream is the subject of a new and important ...

Sex helps sell sports. But when the topic of sex leaves the world of racy beer commercials and sideline cheerleaders, to touch the lives of individual women pursuing their sporting dreams, things get a little more personal and the debate gets a good deal more fierce.Enter the Canadian women's rugby team, one of the world's very best. Shortly after the introduction of Rugby Sevens to the summer Olympics was announced, beginning with the 2016 games in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, Canada's women's team decided to pose for an annual calendar to help raise funds and promote awareness of their cause. ...