RUNIT: A New Collision Sport Sparks Concerns Over Concussions

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A video posted online showcases medics assisting a man who was swiftly knocked to the ground during an international event featuring a new “sport” developed in Australia.

Lying on the ground is former NRL player Kevin Proctor, who participated in an exhibition match in Dubai over the weekend. The event’s promoters describe it as the “world’s fiercest, new collision sport.”

RUNIT was conceived by a group of friends from Melbourne less than a year ago. The Dubai event follows competitions in Melbourne and Auckland held in recent months, spurred by growing social media interest.

Despite the RUNIT Championship League amassing nearly 200,000 followers on Instagram quickly, it has faced criticism due to concerns about the competition’s safety.

What is RUNIT?

“Hit hard, stand your ground and inflict damage”, that is the key to winning RUNIT, according to a video on the league’s YouTube channel.

A man on the grounds of a grass playing field surrounded by four other men wearing black.

People are worried about the risks the competition presents not just to the health and safety of its participants but also to those who might attempt to replicate what they watch during these events. Source: Getty / Hannah Peters

The video shows vision of big hits and tackles in rugby games alongside sounds of bodies colliding with force.

It was posted in the lead-up to the Melbourne competition at the end of April and presented by Melbourne Storm player Nelson Asofa-Solomona, who is understood to have since distanced himself from the league.

“The rules of the game are simple, with a run zone of 10 metres, one player carries the ball, and the other defends; if you’re running, the job is simple, you run it straight,” he said in the video.

The video explains that four rounds are played with judges deciding the winner as the person who dominated contact the most.

The league advertised the winner of the Dubai event received $200,000.

Who created RUNIT?

Sports player agent Lou Sticca explained in a social media post that RUNIT was “the brainchild of a dynamic team comprising four Samoan Australian brothers, a cousin, and two Italian Australians and a close mate of ours (CT), all hailing from Dandenong”.

He announced his involvement with RUNIT in the same LinkedIn post about a month ago.

The idea draws inspiration from a game — Run it Straight — which the creators and many other Pacific Islanders have enjoyed in their backyards since childhood.

What are the concerns?

Annitta Siliato, executive director of the Concussion Legacy Foundation Australia, said this competition brought a lot of the work around reducing brain injury backwards.

“I just cannot believe we’ve got this competition, which is encouraging people to run towards each other to knock each other out,” she said.

“It could cause death, and it could cause serious brain injury.”

Siliato said she was aware of people having seizures after participating in activities similar to RUNIT competitions and said repeated head knocks could cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

A man is running on the green field as people watch and cheer around him.

Both competitors run towards each other in RUNIT, one with the ball and one without. Source: Getty / Hannah Peters

Siliato said a lot of public education and work with different sporting codes had been done in recent years, and “activities like this really bring us backwards”.

The AFL’s concussion panel, last month, ordered West Coast Eagles player Jeremy McGovern to retire on medical grounds.

Siliato said she was also worried that young people were being influenced by what they had seen of RUNIT on social media and may copy what they see online.

In May, Radio NZ reported that a 19-year-old from Palmerston North city on New Zealand’s North Island died after being critically injured playing a tackling game based on RUNIT.

Brain scans

When asked about safety by a Dubai radio station in the lead-up to the United Arab Emirates event, Sticca, who was the head of the delegation at the event, said: “We’ve developed some very, very quick procedures and we’re developing these as we go.”

He told Dubai Eye 103.8 that participants were screened before taking part.

“We screen every participant with full medicals, including brain scans. We certainly don’t want anyone participating who has any issues with their residual health. We check the athletes after the event as well,” Sticca said.

“We’ve had concussion experts that we’ve engaged to help us identify ways to add value to the sports.”