A Delicate Game: Brain Injury, Sport and Sacrifice
Hana Walker-Brown (Hodder Studio)
Everyone knows that repeated blows to the head can cause long-term damage to the brain. The science is not ambiguous on this point. And so Walker-Brown takes us on a gripping and heartbreaking journey through the human debris of sport, from bereaved families to ex-athletes slowly losing their faculties to dementia. Along the way she asks the key question: why, in the face of such overwhelming evidence, have sports like football and rugby union proved so resistant to reform or even basic responsibility? In large part, she argues, the answers are social and cultural: sport’s sanctification of pain and suffering, frequently framed within Christian ideals of masculinity. And, of course, money has plenty to do with it. Walker-Brown is bleakly clear that there are no easy answers. But it might just help if we start asking the right questions.
