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British & Irish Lions’ Anthony Watson is hit with a high tackle by New Zealand’s Sonny Bill Williams during the second test match at the Westpac Stadium in July 2017. Photo: Anthony Au-Yeung\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
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The British & Irish Lions’ Anthony Watson is tackled by South Africa’s Peiter-Steph du Toit (r) and Makazole Mapimpi during the first Test match in 2021 in Cape Town. Photo: David Rogers\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
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Former England wing Anthony Watson has said he cheated a head injury assessment (HIA) during the second Test of the British and Irish Lions tour of New Zealand in 2017.<\/p>\n
Watson, speaking in a new BBC documentary, \u201cBen Youngs Investigates: How Safe Is Rugby?\u201d, said he had felt the symptoms of concussion following a high tackle from All Black Sonny Bill Williams, which earned him a red card.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew the impact was big and as I got in to do the protocol I was starting to feel a bit hazy,” Watson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt that stage I knew the protocols. They give you five words to remember so it is ‘elbow-apple-carpet-saddle-bubble’. That is what I had.<\/p>\n
\u201cI managed to get through the walking tests and all of that and then when it came to the words, I knew it off by heart so I knew I was going to get straight back on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watson played the rest of the match, as well as the third Test of the series the following week.<\/p>\n
World Rugby has since changed the recall element of the HIA protocol, removing the five words to remember for a more random method that would be harder to prepare for.<\/p>\n
The subject of player welfare, and how the sport deals with head injuries, remains a hot topic in rugby – and there can still be a culture of silence around concussion at the elite levels.<\/p>\n
But centre Garry Ringrose self-reported concussion symptoms before the second Test of the Lions tour of Australian last summer, sitting out the match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British & Irish Lions’ Anthony Watson is hit with a high tackle by New Zealand’s Sonny Bill Williams…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[106650,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-326588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-british-irish-lions","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}