Rugby brain injury lawsuit faces risk of collapse in London court

A legal case involving hundreds of former rugby players who allege they suffered brain injuries during their careers is at risk of collapse at London's High Court.

The claimants include professional and amateur players. They allege that World Rugby, the Welsh Rugby Union, England's Rugby Football Union, the Rugby Football League and the British Amateur Rugby League Association breached a duty of care to protect them from injury.

Senior Master Jeremy Cook is deciding whether to strike out 95 percent of the first batch of 561 claimants. The issue is whether they failed to comply with a ruling requiring disclosure of all available documents relating to their neurological testing.

Cook said lawyer Richard Boardman of Rylands Garth, who until this week represented the claimants, was at fault rather than the former players. He said no claimant could be said to be responsible for the deficiencies in the way the case had been presented.

Boardman has notified the court that he intends to come off the record in the case after the claimants unanimously agreed to end their dealings with Rylands Garth. The claimants are trying to appoint new lawyers, but the source said it remains to be seen whether any firm will take over a case that has already run for six years and cost millions of pounds.

Former Wales rugby union flanker Alix Popham is one of the claimants. He was diagnosed in 2020, at the age of 40, with probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. The source describes CTE as a progressive brain condition thought to be caused by repeated blows to the head and episodes of concussion.

Popham said a change in legal representation was needed because of the scale and complexity of the case. He said he hoped it would help move the proceedings forward as efficiently as possible.

Cook expressed sympathy for claimants whose cases may be struck out, using an analogy of three buses travelling to the same destination, with the first driven off a cliff while the other two arrived.

High-profile former players involved in the case include England rugby union World Cup winners Steve Thompson, Mark Regan and Phil Vickery, and former Wales internationals Colin Charvis, Gavin Henson, Ryan Jones, Lee Byrne and Popham.

The claimants allege they have suffered neurological conditions, including early onset dementia and CTE, because of repeated blows. They argue that the governing bodies had the knowledge and resources to understand the likelihood of brain damage but did not take steps against this or inform players.

Each of the governing bodies denies wrongdoing and is defending the legal claims.