'Hasn’t been proven’: Gregor Townsend wary of trusting mouthguard technology

Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend expressed concerns about the implementation of smart mouthguards after temporarily losing a second player in successive Guinness Six Nations matches for a head injury assessment triggered by the new technology.

This championship is the first time that elite male players have worn ‘instrumented’ mouthguards which send alerts whenever a ‘head acceleration event’ with G-force that exceeds 70g and 4,000 radians per second squared is detected.

Scotland are thought to have been the only team impacted so far, with hooker George Turner going off for an HIA in the first half of the match against France a fortnight ago, with fellow front-rower Zander Fagerson – who was visibly puzzled as he made his way off the pitch – having to do likewise in the seventh minute of Saturday’s Calcutta Cup win over England.

Both players were deemed fit to return to the pitch.

Asked after the England game if Fagerson’s departure from the field was triggered by his mouthguard, Townsend said: “Yes, it was and I saw the tackle again, just a normal tackle.

“I think we have to really watch what we’re doing here by trusting technology that’s not been proven.

“What we’ve been doing over the last few years is making sure that any symptoms that are seen, by a number of people, can flag up whether someone goes off for an HIA.

“Zander was taken off for 10 minutes after what looked like a normal tackle but there was a spike alert from the mouthguard.

“I know in Super Rugby there were a couple of alerts and players were saying ‘there’s nothing wrong here, I’ve just made a tackle’, so we’ve got to watch that because you don’t want to be taking our best players off the field for 10 minutes if there are no issues around concussion.

“We want to protect our players, that’s for certain, but there’s a bit more work to do before this technology is correct.”

Asked if he felt the technology had been rushed in to top-level rugby, Townsend said: “It’s a new thing in the Six Nations and it’s not been used at club level prior to the Six Nations.

“I’d hope they’d learn from today’s incident, and obviously George Turner went off for 10 minutes in the previous game.

“We need to make sure it’s as close to accurate as possible. That’s what we want.

“We have lots of eyes watching and players are now very good at saying ‘I’ve had a head injury here, I have to go off’.

“I think we just need to do a bit more work here before we move on.”