After the concussions, the hell of rugby players: "I had the feeling that another person controlled me"

Our series "Rugby, a sport on borrowed time"

For years, the debate on concussions and player health has stirred up the microcosm without ever getting to the bottom of things. Even if this awareness has led to an evolution of the rules, a hardening of the sanctions on head shocks, there have been in recent years serious accidents, premature career stoppages, cases of early dementia ... and even the dead. The writer and freelance journalist Ludovic Ninet, author of "Petit Éloge du rugby" and "L'Affaire Cécillon: Chantal, récit d'un féminicide", investigated for months. Le Parisien-Aujourd'hui en France exclusively delivers the fruit of this investigative work in an exciting series in four episodes.

Cameron Pierce interrupts the conversation and pulls his wallet out of his pocket. He is looking for his brain donor card. It makes him laugh. He donated his brain to science to look for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease triggered by repeated shocks to the head, if he died in an accident. This is a common practice in the United States. Cameron Pierce is an iconic figure in France of players suffering from prolonged post-concussion syndrome. The Canadiens, former second line of the Section Paloise, stopped his career in 2017, at 24 years old.

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