A former Australian rugby star is calling on New Zealanders to donate their brains to help in studying injury and concussion.
Peter FitzSimons is now a journalist, but played as a lock for the Wallabies. Today, he was one of six former sports stars to pledge their brains to science at Sydney University.
Speaking to Checkpoint's John Campbell, he said the Australian Sports Brain Bank needed pledges of the brains of athletes, and others, to do their research.
"How often do we see, particularly in rugby league but also rugby union, the guy gets completely poleaxed, he's lying facedown for a minute not moving, he's clearly completely motherless, they wake him up, they give him a head injury assessment and he runs back on," he said.
"To which the question is, if it's wasn't concussion what the f*** was it? Was it flu? And there's never any answer to that.
"I don't care if the score is 19-18 in the grand final ... and you're the best kicker or the best scrummager or whatever, there is nothing more important than the health of your brain.
"It never occurred to me that there could be any issue. We footballers of the '80s and '90s were confident that it was only boxers that could get into trouble.
"I suppose about 10 years ago I realised that there was a growing issue in the NFL of footballers ... being discoverd to have CTE, basically the conditon of having battered brains.
Fitzsimons said he went to the US to hear from the Boston brain bank which was taking the brains of deceased NFL footballers. They had examined 111 such brains, and found 110 of those had CTE.
He said having just talked to a former NFL linebacker who had "the brain of a three-year-old" he was left reeling, but it was his next interview that really brought things into focus for him: a leading US brain expert in Virginia.
Former Wallaby, journalist Peter Fitzsimons, has pledged to donate his brain to science. Photo: Photosport NZ
"My opening remarks to him were ... 'I've played a lot of football, but I write a bestselling book every year, I guess I'm OK am I', hoping he would give me a hug and say 'yes, of course you're OK son'."
"He said 'no, no we wouldn't know if you're OK until five, six years from now'.
"He said 'your brain is a bowl of Jello floating around in a bucket of bones, and it's not meant to hit the side of that bucket' ... it's not meant to be going bang, bang, bang, which is what happens when you play aggressive sport.
Fitzsimons said the key message for sports in Australia and New Zealand was: If in doubt, sit it out.
"That means, if you take a hit, if you can see sparkles, if you're feeling vague, if you're not sure, don't go back on."
He said it needed to be taken seriously at all levels of sports.
He said New Zealanders' brains were also needed for the research, and called for pledges and donations from the deceased with the permission of family.
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