o Hutchison et al's12 checklist in ice hockey.
This study represents an attempt to move beyond epidemiological studies by establishing the aetiology and injury mechanism underlying youth concussion and, in doing so, progressing the process of injury prevention. On the basis of the findings, training interventions aimed at improving peripheral vision, targeted conditioning programmes to reduce the effects of fatigue and emphasising safe and effective playing techniques should be structured with the goal of reducing the risk of concussion. While an elimination of concussion in rugby is unlikely, continued research in this area is essential to providing a foundation for the development of effective education, evaluation and prevention strategies.
The authors would like to thank the medical staff at all of these tournaments for their invaluable assistance with the injury data collection: all the nurses and paramedic staff at each of the tournaments as well as the tournament doctors: Dr Deon Van Tonder, Dr Malebo Mokotedi, Dr Andrea Burmeister, Dr Patho Cele, Dr Charles Smit, Dr Liz Leuenberger, Dr Ferdi Adams and Dr Viaan Vellerman. They would also like to thank SARU's BokSmart National Rugby Safety Programme and Medical Department for commissioning this injury surveillance project. The authors would also like to express their gratitude to the National Research Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship for their support.
Contributors SH was responsible for write-up of the manuscript and study conceptualisation. SO was responsible for data collection. NB and SMF assisted with data collection and data analyses. CR and WV set up injury data collection and access to video. JCB collected injury data. ML assisted in all aspects. All the authors edited the manuscript.
Competing interests None declared.
Ethics approval This study was granted ethical approval by the University of Cape Town Health Science Human Research Ethics Committee. UCT Human Research Ethics Committee (injury database HREC Ref: 438/2011; video database HREC Ref: R042/2013).
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement No additional data are available.
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.