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P rofessor Nick Draper is on a mission to create evidence-based headgear that actually protects players’ brains. Traditionally, headgear serves a purpose in rugby, offering protection against certain types of injuries such as lacerations or cauliflower ears, but is not likely to reduce concussion risk. “I had a concept of developing improved rugby headgear,” Nick says. “All three of my sons played rugby. As a parent, I wanted to make the game safer for them. As a scientist, I wanted to make it safer for all junior players.” Enter Professor Keith Alexander, a renowned mechanical engineer, the inventor of the Springfree trampoline, and one of Nick’s trusted colleagues. “He’s a very good engineer and knows a lot about commercialisation,” Nick says. “So we sat down for a coffee. He looked at my idea in terms of feasibility and offered a crucial perspective – that before designing better headgear, we first needed a better understanding of the nature of collisions in junior rugby, from an engineering and physics standpoint.” This sparked a decade’s worth of research to create the world’s first evidence-based protective headgear for rugby. To begin with, Nick designed a methodology using MRI FROM PREBBLETON TO THEWORLD The Kiwi effort to redesign rugby headgear A girls’ rugby team from Prebbleton, the inventor of Springfree Trampolines, and a neuroscientist from the University of Canterbury are all involved in an exciting project to make rugby safer not just in New Zealand, but around the world. ”All three of my sons played rugby,“ says Professor Nick Draper. ”As a parent, I wanted to make the game safer for them. As a scientist, I wanted to make it safer for all junior players.“ 8 Headlines