Letter from Luke Marshall to the Sunday Independent

Dear Mr Fanning, I have read your Sunday Independent article dated 21st September 2014 headlined ‘Player education needed to help reduce serious injuries’.

Many of my friends and relatives have also read it. I think your article is unfair and derogatory of me, and that view is shared by others to whom I have spoken.

There is no-one involved in sport who should adopt a cavalier attitude to the risks of serious sporting injury. I certainly do not because they can affect not only my livelihood, but my life itself. You have indicated in your article that another interview which I gave about my history of head injury, “beggared belief” with the implication that I treat this matter in some casual or offhand way. In your article, referring to me, you say “. . . whose bell has been rung so often he must feel like a fire engine. . .” Frankly, I don’t actually know what this soundbite of yours is meant to mean, but it is presumably your attempt at a light-hearted jibe about the serious subject that I am being accused by you of trying to trivialise.
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