Dr Colin Doherty

What we know is that they're taking multiple blows in one individual game.

And you don't have to take a direct blow to the head, by the way, to get a concussion.

You can get a blow to the stomach and your head goes rocks back and forth.

It's the shaking injury, really, that's the main difficulty for the brain's well-being.

We're seeing, you know, in the professional game, somewhere between seven and 12 of these sub-concussive blows per game.

So that's thousands of blows in a lifetime.

Now, that's not happening in the amateur game yet.

But all of us who have them, and I always put up a picture of my youngest son who played high level rugby in a rugby school in South Dublin.

And these guys are going into the gym and they're building up themselves now at 6.30 in the morning.

I mean, the school boys, like we have an image that we show of a 15-year-old who looks like he's, you know, he looks like he's 200 pounds, looks like a professional player.

So it's creeping into the amateur game that the physicality, the stakes are really high.

The players don't want to come off the pitch.

They're getting multiple small blows per game.

And I'm asking the same question you're asking now, like,

What does a parent do?

You know what I mean?

In the context of us, of a child, boys and girls, by the way, because increasingly with girls who want to play rugby, who want to play this game, who are attracted by all aspects of the game, including the greatness of the team sports and all the great things that sport does.

How are we to advise them?

And the problem at the moment is that, you know, we have most concussion, 99% of concussion is not what you saw in that South African series with Ireland or in the Munster-Ulster game last week.

It's not professional sport.