The new head of Victoria’s professional boxing regulator has embraced criticism the sport has a “cookie-cutter” approach to concussion and lacks CTE prevention strategies, an inquest has heard.
Alan Clayton, chair of the Professional Boxing and Combat Sports Board, told the inquest into former AFL footballer Shane Tuck’s death the organisation was “receptive” to the assessment of the internationally renowned neurosurgeon Dr Robert Cantu, whose report he called “a really powerful piece of work”.
Cantu told the inquiry on Wednesday night the Victorian boxing board was not doing enough to address the issue of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the debilitating neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated head trauma and increasingly linked to long-term exposure to contact sports.
“Your focus was very much on concussion,” Cantu said. “I did not find much about CTE and long term effects and I think that is a major concern, at least for me.”
Boxing’s concussion management strategies, including its recommended stand-down periods of 30 days, were “cookie-cutter stuff”, Cantu said.
“All concussions are not the same,” Cantu said. “These are kind of rough guidelines. What’s really more important is the severity of the injury and how the individual is doing and that should really guide how long somebody stays out, rather than … some arbitrary amount of time.”
Cantu also mentioned the vascular changes, inflammation and other long-term effects of repeated head trauma “that can give rise to symptoms even without CTE” – and were first seen in boxers and documented in the 1920s – as causes of concern for player health in the sport.
Tuck, who played 173 AFL games for Richmond Football Club between 2004 and 2013, later had a brief boxing career, from 2015 to 2017. He killed himself at the age of 38 in July 2020.
Tuck, who self-reported numerous concussions during his sporting career and later suffered from rapidly worsening mental health, was found by the Australian Sports Brain Bank to have suffered from severe CTE. It can only be definitively diagnosed by autopsy.
Coroner John Cain said in his opening address last week much of the focus of the inquest would be on head trauma in Australian rules football and in boxing, and the opportunities to reduce or minimise those risks.
Cantu told the court on Wednesday he thought it was “not only important, but I think it’s correct” for players, parents and officials at junior, grassroots and amateur levels of boxing and Australian rules football to be educated about concussion, subconcussive trauma and CTE, as well as professionals.
“I think it’s very appropriate that the long-term risks of sustaining repetitive traumatic brain injuries is understood not only by professionals that play the sport for money, but especially for amateurs, and especially our youth,” Cantu said.
Cantu’s evidence on Wednesday regarding boxing echoed evidence he gave last week that focused on Australian rules football. He told the court last weekhe saw a “missed opportunity” for the AFL to focus on prevention of CTE and long-term damage in players, including from sub-concussive trauma; that is, the jolts and blows that cause damage to the brain but don’t result in clinical symptoms.
Clayton, a former Greyhound Racing Victoria executive, said on Thursday he believed understanding and management of brain injuries across the sport ought to be improved.
“We can’t have cookie-cutter responses to these things. It’s got to be based on medical assessments of individuals and their capability to heal,” Clayton said.
“We’re very receptive to the comments that he’s making.”
It was important trainers, promoters and others involved in the boxing business first understood the issues with player health were “not just concussion”, Clayton said.
Clayton said while the board accepted the broad criticisms from Cantu, it had made no decisions with respect to how those criticisms might be adopted in educational materials or head trauma-related policies.
Boxing regulation across Australia is state-based, patchy and inconsistent. Clayton rejected the notion, put to him by counsel assisting the coroner Gideon Boas, that there was any “appetite or interest” among regulatory bodies to nationalise their operations.
Clayton said there was interest from the boxing board in funding a study into the recent Australian deaths from boxing, and that any data collected about the brain health of combat sportspeople would probably affect the development of boxing policies.
The inquest continues.
