Ten former professional rugby league players with symptoms of neurological damage will file a complaint against the English federation (RFL) for negligence, the law firm which defends them announced on Wednesday.

These ten players, including Bobbie Goulding, former coach of the France team from 2009 to 2011, form a "pilot group", said the firm Rylands Legal, which also represents 175 rugby players in a similar procedure launched in December against those responsible for their discipline.

In total, about fifty players at XIII, whose age ranges from their twenties to fifties, and presenting symptoms associated with brain damage, are represented by these lawyers.

The collective complaint accuses the RFL of negligence for failing to protect the players from the consequences of concussions.

"All of a sudden, everything deteriorated"

"That such a thing, out of nowhere, comes to hit me like a bus, it's hard to accept," said Goulding, quoted in the press release, and who learned this month that he was suffering from precocious dementia and probably chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease diagnosed mainly in athletes who have suffered regular shocks to the head.

“My symptoms started suddenly two years ago,” said Mickii Edwards, 48, a former Welsh international pillar, also suffering from dementia and possibly CTE. All of a sudden, everything deteriorated. I got clumsy, I was dropping things all the time. I had headaches, waves of fatigue. I couldn't stand the bright lights anymore, even the fact that my wife turned on the light in the morning got on my nerves. The loud noises were painful. "

The complainants claim that the RFL take "immediate, relatively inexpensive measures (...) such as limiting contact in training and extending the period necessary before resuming play" in the event of a concussion, explained the lawyer Richard Boardman.

The governing body of world rugby union, World Rugby, had recommended at the end of September to limit the phases of contact in training in order to protect players from injury.

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