World Rugby’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Martin Raftery, has serious doubts about a report by clinicians associated with the Australian Sports Brain Bank of two NRL players diagnosed at autopsy as having the degenerative brain condition, CTE.
“If you compare the typical clinical descriptions of the two NRL players with the description normally proposed and combine this with 60 opinions around the world that neuropathological findings for CTE are not confirmed, then I have considerable doubt around this report,” he said.Dr Raftery quoted the clinical description of the two cases: "Both cases were middle-aged ex-professionals who had each played more than 150 first grade NRL games over many years.
Despite extensive enquiries, media have not been able to identify the two middle-aged men who played in the NRL, a competition which began in 1997, and who donated their brains to a bank which opened in March 2018. While the RPA researchers point out that in all the autopsies studied, the only two with what they term CTE were the two deceased rugby league players, another 98 studies of the brains of retired NRL players may find no evidence of CTE.