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Article History

Accepted: 23 October 2024

First Online: 16 November 2024

Declarations

:

: G.T. and B.J. have received research funding from Prevent Biometrics and World Rugby. K.S. and M.B. have received research funding from World Rugby. L.S., R.T., E.F., D.S. and J.B. are employed by or contracted as consultants to World Rugby. G.T. previously conducted consultancy work for World Rugby. K.S. and S.K. are employed by the Rugby Football Union. S.H. receives funding for his PhD studies from the Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby. B.J. is a consultant with Premiership Rugby and the Rugby Football League. M.C. is employed by Premiership Rugby and was previously employed by the Rugby Football Union. P.O.H. has previously been contracted by the Rugby Football Union and is employed by Marker Diagnostics UK Ltd, a company developing salivary biomarker testing for sport related concussion. D.A. and J.T. declare they have no conflicts of interest.

: Funding was provided by World Rugby, the Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby.

: Anonymised data available upon reasonable request.

: This project was approved by the University’s Research Ethics Committee, University of Ulster (#REC-21-0061). The study was performed in accordance with the standards of ethics outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki.

: All participants provided written consent.

: Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, conduct, reporting or dissemination plans of this research.

: D.A., L.S., R.T., E.F. and G.T. conceptualised the research project. All authors were involved in the design and data collection for the study. D.A., J.T., L.S., R.T., E.F. and G.T. were responsible for the analysis and interpretation of the results. D.A. and G.T. drafted the manuscript. All authors critically reviewed and edited the manuscript prior to submission.