This is a dramatic turn in the biggest legal case in rugby history. Sitting on Wednesday and Thursday, the High Court in London examined the governing bodies’ application to strike out almost all of the first claims filed by former players with brain injuries. The issue is not the substance of the case, but the handling of it by their own lawyer.

This is a dramatic turn in the biggest legal case in rugby history. Sitting on Wednesday and Thursday, the High Court in London examined the governing bodies’ application to strike out almost all of the first claims filed by former players with brain injuries. The issue is not the substance of the case, but the handling of it by their own lawyer.

95% of the first claims threatened with being struck out

Lawyers for World Rugby, the English (RFU) and Welsh (WRU) unions, and the Rugby Football League for rugby league, asked the British courts to throw out 337 union players’ claims and 153 league ones. That is roughly 95% of the first 561 claimants, among them 2003 world champions Steve Thompson, Phil Vickery and Mark Regan, and former Wales internationals Gavin Henson, Ryan Jones and Colin Charvis.

The grounds are procedural: Richard Boardman, of the firm Rylands Garth, failed to file documents relating to his clients’ neurological examinations within the deadlines, despite a court order.

The judge clears the players and condemns the lawyer

Senior Master Jeremy Cook was very clear about where responsibility lay. “No claimant can in any way be held responsible for the shortcomings identified,” the judge said, while pointing, according to BBC Sport, to “a complete failure by Mr Boardman to understand and address the criticisms made”.

Dropped unanimously by his clients, Mr Boardman has announced his withdrawal from the case. The former players, who accuse the governing bodies of failing to protect them against repeated concussions and their consequences (early-onset dementia, chronic traumatic encephalopathy), are now looking for new representation.

The decision has been reserved, with no timetable announced. Nothing has therefore been rejected yet, but the proceedings, launched in 2020, have never looked so fragile.