Naomi Nicol

speaker

141 appearances 3 recordings 2 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 8 Jul

Naomi Nicol’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.

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Today with David McCullagh · A game changer for rugby: How lowering tackle height has reduced concussion and injuries in adult players · 17 Jun 2026 podcast

James's.

He's head of the School of Medicine in Trinity College.

He welcomed this research, but he also wants to put it in a broader context.

Now, he says we know a lot more now about concussive blows.

So these are blows where you'd have symptoms and then sub-concussive blows.

That's where you don't have symptoms such as, for example, dizziness or seeing stars, but they could still have the same force.

What did you make of the results of this study?

I mean, I suppose it's welcome in the first place that now we are looking at these areas a lot more.

Because obviously some of the narrative after reporting on this study already has been that some of the changes brought in, particularly at over 18 level, have begun to have an impact.

And they've pointed out some of the areas that could be worked on.

For example, a lot of the determination in the study of what was concussion, it's been evaluated by coaches, by people who are non-specialists in determining what concussion is, albeit they might have a lot of experience.

We need to see comparative studies, as I said.

We need to better understand what the results are saying about the game here and about the game elsewhere.

But as Professor Doherty said, it is a welcome body of research.

It does give a good starting point when trying to evaluate whether these rule changes have had an impact or not.

Now, one last person I spoke to about all of this was Fiona O'Brien, a former international player, former Leinster player.

I asked Fiona, what did she think of the findings of this study?

In terms of the reasons why we're not seeing, according to this one study, a fall in underage levels of concussion, why would you think that is?

Well, it was interesting because he only came to it this year and we came to it very much as fans.

First, we used to go to all the under-20s games here and then he really wanted to play.

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