ÉANNA FALVEY
DR ÉANNA FALVEY was appointed chief medical officer of World Rugby in January following extensive experience as team doctor for Munster, Ireland and the Lions. Falvey didn’t play rugby, having grown up in GAA and hurling country in East Cork, but was an international amateur boxer. He has worked at elite level across a wide range of sports.
Falvey has a private sports medicine practice in Cork and lectures to Masters students (mainly physiotherapists) at University College Cork. We popped a few questions…
Rugby World: How do you see your job at World Rugby?
Éanna Falvey: To make the game as safe as possible for players. But not just to focus on the negative side of injury but also on the positives. Rugby brings a lot to the table: team participation, a sense of community, physical activity.
I’ve been lucky to take over from Dr Martin Raftery, who did a phenomenal job in revolutionising medical standards.
Rugby was one of the first sports to implement an off-field assessment for concussion. Previously we had about 26 seconds to assess a (potential) concussion; getting someone off the pitch and having initially five minutes and then ten to make that assessment significantly improved how well we could make a decision about a player. At the 2011 World
Cup, more than half the players who had a concussion stayed on the pitch and that’s down at below 8% now.
RW: Can the concussion process be improved?
We want to do better. We’ve got five published papers in press looking at how to improve the HIA (head injury assessment) process. How we can improve the tool, the baseline
