How different is dogfighting from american football, rugby and league? A thought provoking article by Malcolm Gladwell. It doesn't specifically discuss rugby or league but I think it is reasonable to extend the analogy to them.
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quote:
We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing else—neither considerations of science nor those of morality—can compete with the destructive power of that love.
In “Dogmen and Dogfights,” Evans and Forsyth write:
When one views a staged dog fight between pit bulls for the first time, the most macabre aspect of the event is that the only sounds you hear from these dogs are those of crunching bones and cartilage. The dogs rip and tear at each other; their blood, urine and saliva splatter the sides of the pit and clothes of the handlers. . . . The emotions of the dogs are conspicuous, but not so striking, even to themselves, are the passions of the owners of the dogs. Whether they hug a winner or in the rare case, destroy a dying loser, whether they walk away from the carcass or lay crying over it, their fondness for these fighters is manifest. ?
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell#ixzz1LZ7OXBoo
As I am currently 8 months into a recovery from a concussion sustained in a snowboarding accident, I am starting to wonder if my recovery is taking so much longer in part because of all the 'little' hits I took as a flanker playing rugby. I began to wear headgear in 6th form, and this certainly made me more reckless with driving into rucks etc with my head, and I suffered from constant headaches every day for around a year or more back then. Nothing was diagnosed though.
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