For those of you who have been regular visitors to my blog, the subject of concussions has become a very near and dear subject to my heart after my wife’s travails since suffering a concussion in late September during a car accident. She missed a month of work, and has still be noticing all manners of things that have changed, both little and small, since her concussion. She has noticed that things like food tasting different, having a harder time multi-tasking, and that she has a very low boiling point when things frustrate her-it does not take much to get her angry.

I stumbled onto an interesting posting thanks “Ref” at http://refblog.co.uk/2009/11/02/ref-abuse/   In his posting you can see the links and video clip that tie in with this posting.

My wife would be shocked to learn that she has something in common with rugby prop forward in this regard. In this case, the prop is the Zimbabwean born Brian Mutaji, who has been capped 12 times by South Africa, and currently plies his trade with the Northampton Saints of the English Premiership. To compare my lovely red-headed bride to a six-foot, 260 pound prop forward seems like a stretch, but in this case, the comparison is apt.

Back on October 6th, Mutaji, and his Northampton Saints, were playing away to defending French Champions Perpignan, when during the course of the game, Mutaji gave match referee Nigel Owens a really blatant, two-hounded shove in the back. Normally, such an infraction of laying hands on a match official would handled in the most severe of fashions, normally a 24 week suspension. Northampton and Mutaji came up with a novel approach to get the suspension trimmed to a mere six weeks: During the match, it seems that Mutaji suffered a concussion. This meant that the Northampton prop was “not in his right mind” when he gave the Welsh referee his two-armed shiver in the back.

I have mixed feelings about this, as somebody who has played the game of rugby(as a prop, no less), but I have also been a match referee in high school soccer(football) and wrestling. It’s very tough to rationalize a physical assault on any match official. That said, I have to say that with my experience with my wife, and also working with patients with TBI (Traumatic brain injury), that there are people with head injuries really do have low boiling and frustration points.  Now granted, my wife has not taken a swing at me, nor have I seen her hitting our dogs or cats, but I do think the issue of TBI is not going to go away any time soon. Beyond the green rugby pitches of Europe, society in the United Stated and Britain are having a whole group of people coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering the effects of TBI and concussion syndrome. Some of these soldiers and Marines have a very real chance of running afoul of the judicial system.  Will the legal systems in the US and Britain give a virtual hall-pass, or hold these people to a different standard as the International Rugby Board seems to have done with Mutaji? To be fair, he did admit guilt in the incident.

Still, I think that this incident highlights what may end up becoming a growing problem that will extend beyond the rugby pitch for Mutaji. If this prop has had multiple concussions, how will these concussions affect him as he goes through the rest of his life, his relationships with women and even how he disciplines his kids. Will he be more prone to lash at his friends and loved ones? If he was able to do this to a match official-and in rugby, the match official is held on a very lofty place compared to other sports-what will happen the next time Mutaji is having to deal with a frustration in his life-and what type of support will he and his family have?