Antonio Loiacono died at the age of 20 on the Australian football field from a blow to the head – Corriere.it

A young soccer player Australian rules football — a cross between rugby and Gaelic football — died on Sunday within hours of a dramatic gaming accident. Antonio Loiacono, 20 years oldOf Birdwoodnear Adelaide, took part in the inaugural match of the A-grade, the highest amateur level, between his country’s team and that of nearby Gumeracha on Saturday. In the last quarter of the meeting, the impact it made on him a brain concussion.

The paramedics who rushed to the scene found him unconscious and ordered the helicopter transport to the Royal Adelaide Hospitalwhere the young man was hospitalized in intensive care supported by machines for an intracranial hemorrhage.

Twenty-four hours later his brother Jack, a year younger, announced the brain deadthen appealing to the sports authorities and not only for do more in cases of concussion or briberyand for athletes who have suffered previously.

Antonio, in fact, had already had some in the past. He had arrived at Birdwood a few months after playing for Hope Valley, Golden Grove and Waikerie Football in the lower categories.

Southern Australia NFL Chief Executive Darren Chandler offered support to both teams involved and commented: “Everyone in the Sanfl is deeply shocked and saddened by the death of Antonio Loiacono.”

In the’Australian Football there are on average 5-6 players who suffer a concussion every thousand hours of play, which translates into an average of 6.5 cases per team each season. Since 2013, a rule had been introduced in the upper levels whereby, after a blow to the head with concussion, players could only resume activity after undergoing specific tests. Since 2012, however, the minimum limit of 12 days before a possible green light upon returning to the field.

Similar studies, applied to rugby, have recently also involved the United Kingdom. In 2021 Stevie Ward, captain of the Leeds Rhinos, had announced his retirement due to too many head traumas at the age of 27, explaining that he found himself fighting every day with headaches and dizziness and being in a constant state of confusion. He was just the latest in a chain of players to report the fact. The previous December Steve Thompson, then 42, a 2003 world champion hooker, explained to Guardian suffer from early-onset dementia. On the same day, Welsh flanker Alix Popham admitted to suffering from the same symptoms at just 40 years old. And shortly after Ed Slater, 33, had spoken of Sla.

Furthermore, a 2022 study published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry and conducted by the University of Glasgow, in the United Kingdom, showed that this type of trauma produces a higher incidence of neurodegenerative diseases in the rugby player population.

In the soccer it has only been three years since additional head injury substitutions were introduced, as seen at the World Cup in the final between France and Argentina.