Concussion-the-line Photo: Getty Images.

The early months of this football year served a stark reminder of the ever-present risks in our most popular codes. The cases of Newcastle’s Alex McKinnon in the NRL, and GWS’ Phil Davis in the AFL, also showed the best side of the footy community, which responded with an outpouring of support to these misfortunes.

These were accidents, which have periodically marked football, but are not beyond the bounds of many spheres of life. But set against another story that has finally begun to play out in Australian sport in a major way – the long-term impact of football on the brain – we are seeing a curious and conflicted attitude toward player safety.

The concussion issue is proving thorny because it strikes directly at the most elemental aspects of collison sport. Footy traditionalists, already suspicious of creeping softness in the modern, image-conscious game, see a justification in search of an agenda. Their arguments have become familiar: this American research doesn’t apply to our games. They hit with their heads. The science is still in an early stage. This is hysteria, as Wayne Bennett put it.

The Knights coach is right about the debate being hysterical – but the issue of brain injury, unfortunately, is one that has needed some urgency. The actions of the NFL, which tried to muddy the waters tobacco industry-style, did not help. But on the level of the public consciousness, concussion has been regarded as a lower-order injury, something a player shakes off as a mark of toughness. It has not been treated with the same seriousness as, say, leg injuries. (And to think only in terms of concussion is wrong – a significant finding of the research is the cumulative effect of sub-concussive hits.)

The Boston University study, which is the leader in the field, took an important step a couple of months ago, as it confirmed its first case of CTE, the impact-related build-up of protein in the brain that causes dementia, in an Australian rugby union player, Barry Taylor. It is just one case (another study in Scotland found CTE in a union player), and a long line of medical experts will trot out the line that any number of factors other than football can correlate to this condition.

Unfortunately, football now has its own climate change-like debate, as two sides battle back and forth while waiting for the science to “come in”, as if that’s how science works. Pity the poor players, playing roulette with their brain health, caught in the middle of it. The NRL has actually shown admirable initiative on this issue, being proactive with its rule changes and treatment policy in the face of public criticism. (In one sense, it has to – unlike the massively resourced NFL, the rugby league could ill afford a liability lawsuit.)

Because of the structure of our codes in Australia, our footballs are in an interesting position. The likes of the NRL and AFL are responsible for administering the whole of their game. The brain injury issue has been framed largely as an elite-level concern – there is such a thing as an assumption of risk. But as Boston University’s Chris Nowinski has often said, when it comes to this issue, he’s more worried about the effects on the youths and amateurs who don’t receive the compensation or care that the pros do.

There’s been a highly reductive impulse at work in this issue – the notion that the end of high-intensity contact sport is nigh always seems to pop up. It won’t happen, and it shouldn’t (back-alley football, anybody?) But there lurks a fundamental moral question that will confront every fan: we believe that sport has great power in promoting well-being, both within and among people. Sport is good for you. When that stops being true, what then?