Here’s a clue.

Or perhaps for NFL, five points for union, and four points for league.

Smashed Em Bro.

Great TV.  Love it.

Must write full sentences.

Righto.

We all love the full contact with rugby and league.  The professional era has seen bigger, fitter, faster athletes smashing each other, eh bro.

Just like the NFL.

Problem is that the NFL is finding out that those big hits keeping on hitting well after players retire.

They wear protection for a reason (no, not THAT type of protection):

But in the long term, most alarming of all is the reason why those children in the park – none of them more than 12 years old – were kitted out like medieval knights girded for battle. Even the most casual observer can’t watch a game for 10 minutes without realising that gridiron football is a brutal business.

Funny thing is that the Yanks think NFL is brutal and they were all that protection.  But perhaps the protection ain’t working?

In September, the University of Michigan published a survey (paid for by the [NFL]) of more than 1,000 former players, who had all put in a minimum of three seasons. The study found that among those over 50, dementia, Alzheimer’s and other memory-related diseases were five times higher than the national average, while for younger retired players the incidence was 19 times greater.

Hands up those who think the NZRFU board must have played NFL?  But we shouldn’t poke the borax:

The NFL and others have challenged the reliability of the figures, but anecdotal evidence from physicians and other research points to an identical conclusion. Ever more cases are also coming to light of ex-players suffering from the separate condition of CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. They are, in plain English, “punch-drunk,” like a boxer who’s hung around the ring too long.

What about the future?  Good question!

So what happens now? Obviously you can’t eliminate injuries in football without getting rid of the game itself. Like boxers, the players know the risks they are getting into and, though careers are not long, they are well paid. The biggest obstacle to real change is the sport’s macho culture.  …  But that culture still consists of men playing through injury as a point of pride. It’s where concussion is for wimps, and where a bone-crushing hit is as big an attraction as a cleverly worked touchdown.

The point of course is that NFL has been professional and smashing em bros for decades.

The issue for league and union is that we haven’t yet seen the impact of the level of contact we now have and love.

We’re used to league and union players being drunk – but punch drunk?

Apparently, he’s getting the equivalent of NZ’s first quarter GDP:

The Knights and the Kingz before them were definitely crap.  The Warriors have had some famously crap seasons altho remarkably they never ever managed to come last.

Supporting the Black Crap is a challenge but at least in cricket there’s teams from Bangladesh and Zimbabwe which guarantees us the odd win here or there.

So pity the good citizens from Detroit who’ve just been throught the perfect season – perfect crap with a record of 0-16.

No other team in the NFL has managed that although the Tampa Bay expansion team in the 1970’s managed a 0-14 season.

To make it even more impressive (in terms of train crashes), the Lions managed a 1-15 season last year.  If you can’t do the sums, that’s a combined season record over the past 2 years of 1-33.

Even the Knights managed to win a game.

If you want to put it into context, it’s poetic that the Lions come from Detroit, the home of the US motor industry.

The motor industry is being bailed out by the US govt … but the Lions look like being a bigger challenge.

The next time you hear some plonker go on about the Warriors , Nix or any other team, just think of Detroit.