The School of Hard Knocks For Football Players – Richard Guilliatt
In ‘The School of Hard Knocks For Football Players’ Richard Guilliatt starts the discussion of contact sports and the effect that they have on people. He makes a strong case mentioning the drastic effects that concussion, received during sport, can have on a person in the long-term.
Guilliatt looks at the specific case of Rugby Union star Berrick Barnes and the excessive physical and mental issues he had moving on from injuries related to concussion. Guilliatt injects a lot of emotion into this article as he discusses how severe the long term effects of concussion related injuries can be. He goes on to discuss the input on the topic from neurologist John Watson. Guilliatt continues to display authority in his writing taking the words of Watson as a respected neurologist and the first-hand accounts of Barnes.
Guilliatt brings other accounts to his article including Matt Psaltis who played for his high-school rugby team, he suffered a head injury that resulted in some memory loss, dizziness, and prolonged headaches and, after a second concussion in the sport, he was advised to stop playing altogether.
More case studies are mentioned in the article and each one supports the idea that contact sports can cause concussion related injuries that could potentially have awful, long-term effects. He backs this up with evidence from retired gridiron players that are over fifty ‘suffer “dementia-related conditions” at five times the rate of the general population.’
Overall Guilliatt presented a well argued and quite insightful point of view on the overlooked issue of the effects of contact sports.
Mother courage: Rosie Batty’s life after Luke – Fiona Harari
The murder of Luke Batty devastated the nation when he was murdered by his father on a sports field when he was only eleven years old. Unlike most of the reports surrounding the family that, understandably, discuss the tragic incident, Fiona Harari decides to take a more focussed look at Rosie Batty’s (Luke’s mother) life after her son’s death.
The article visits all sorts of different stages in Rosie’s life and looks into the ways she has continued in her life after going through the trauma of losing her son. One thing that stands out about this is that Luke’s death is constantly brought up but it’s never talked about all too much and is generally swiftly directed on from talking about it. Although Harari tries to keep the article focussed on Rosie’s life rather than Luke’s death, she does take some time to discuss some of the horrible moments in Luke’s life growing up where there were all sorts of issues with his father including threats of physical violence.
Harari chooses to bring up some levels of positivity including the copious amounts of support that Rosie received from people from all around and even talks about the way that Rosie has been able to have a positive impact on other people.
Harari provides a wonderful article full of emotion that takes a different stance on the more often reported on death of Luke.