High Concussion Rate in Student Community Rugby Union Players During the 2018 Season: Implications for Future Research Directions.

Collision sports, such as Rugby Union ("Rugby") have a particularly high risk of injury. Of all injuries common to collision sports, concussions have received the most attention due to the potentially negative cognitive effects in the short- and long-term. Despite non-professional Rugby players comprising the majority of the world's playing population, there is relatively little research in this population. Stellenbosch Rugby Football Club ("Maties"), the official rugby club of Stellenbosch University, represents one of the world's largest non-professional Rugby clubs, making this an ideal cohort for community-level injury surveillance. The aim of this study was to describe the incidence and events associated with concussion in this cohort. Baseline demographics were obtained on the 807 male student Rugby non-professional players who registered for the 10-week long 2018 season, which comprised 101 matches and 2,915 of exposure hours. All match-related injuries were captured by the medical staff of Stellenbosch Campus Health Service on an electronic form developed from the consensus statement for injury recording in Rugby. The mean age, height and weight of this cohort were 20 ± 2 years, 182 ± 7 cm and 88 ± 14 kg, respectively. Overall, there were 89 time-loss injuries, which equated to an injury rate of 30.6 per 1,000 match hours [95% confidence intervals (CIs): 24.2-36.9], or about one injury per match. The most common injury diagnosis was "concussion" (