Can it really be three years since cricketer Phillip Hughes died? Three years since we put our bats out to commemorate the gritty young player who died in a freak accident while representing his state?
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That's how Australians characterise these deaths. Freak accidents.
But ask Lauren Fortington, an epidemiologist at Federation University, and she will give a different answer. Sport kills. On average, one person dies every day. Most of our sporting deaths are not freak accidents; many are avoidable. They don't happen on a national stage but in our communities - just playing, not even competing.
Most of the time, we don't even notice because the deaths might not even be reported in the news. When they are reported, you'll read the phrase "collapsed and died". That doesn't give us much insight into what really happened.
Sport kills on the field and in the water. Fortington looked at deaths between 2001 and 2015 and, yes, on average, nearly one a day. Our hearts give out while we run harder than we've run in years. We drown at the beach or in rivers.
I'm shocked by the numbers. I can think of maybe half a dozen times in the last year I've read anything about someone dying as they played sport. And the 300-plus Australians who died? They died doing what they loved, participants in all kinds of sport at all levels, from elite to the local veterans' club. These figures are from coroners' reports across Australia.
Fortington doesn't want to alarm anyone (too late with me) but she says we don't really see these deaths as a set. We don't see what they have in common.
"You don't see them together until you start looking [and then] you see the setting, you see the cardiac deaths, the exertional deaths."
But our sporting communities can save lives if they work together, Fortington says. "Sport should be safe."
That's because we need to do it. Physical activity helps us prevent disease and manage our decaying bodies. And it would be much safer if administrators of all codes, sports and activities pooled what they know about participant safety. Fortington says most sports work in isolation instead of working together.
Student tribute outside Phillip Hughes's old primary school St Patrick's #RIPPhillipHughes #putoutyourbats pic.twitter.com/U6Yj7iGhSk??? cricket.com.au (@CricketAus) December 2, 2014
But some sports that face risk and try to find ways to minimise that risk. According to a new report by Peter Brukner, the team doctor for Cricket Australia in 2014, there were 174 known cricket deaths: the first was in 1864 and the last was Hughes. Death rates plummeted from two deaths a year in the first half of the 20th century to three deaths since 2000. That coincided with the widespread use of helmets by batters. Helmets have virtually eliminated deaths from blows to the head (although I remember that, even in the late 1990s, kids who wore helmets were mocked as they walked to the crease).
Fortington reminds me that football codes are slammed for having concussion guidelines ("slamming" may be the 21st century version of the idiot fathers at the cricket ground saying helmets are unnecessary). And Amanda Clacy's new research on concussion shows only 1 per cent of players, coaches and parents felt they had a responsibility to treat concussion in grassroots rugby in Australia. She advises the sport to "improve understanding", which I think may be code for "pull yourselves together and save your kids' brains".
Dheeshana Sayakkarage, GP and club doctor for the RMIT football club, researched amateur soccer clubs She says they don't have specialists on-hand to deal with emergencies. She's trying to develop a protocol for soccer that she affectionately calls the "talk test", which even non-medical people could administer to check the well-being of those are injured.
As each sport develops its own protocols - and those that do deserve our celebration - our community groups must come together to share knowledge of what works and what doesn't.
The good news is that, in both Victoria and in NSW, state governments have funded defibrillator programs. Fortington's research says that some clubs applied for the portable defibs because they were free - but have begun training to discover exactly what to do with the lifesavers.
But to save lives, we must know more about what causes death and which populations are most at risk. That's how we cut road deaths. There is more we can do. Fortington is calling for a national register of sporting deaths, with reliable data. It's the entire setting that matters, and that includes umpiring, the spirit of the game and, clearly, the emergency management.
It's in that data that we will be able to see exactly what causes the deaths of those doing what they love.
Jenna Price is a Fairfax columnist and an academic at the University of Technology Sydney. She received the Australian Injury Prevention Network's 2017 reporting fellowship.
Twitter: @JennaPrice
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