Rugby union’s brutal reality: the physical and mental toll of an elite playing career | Michael Aylwin

Life as an elite rugby player offers a great career, says George Chuter, but he warns ‘the human body can’t take that sort of punishment and come away scot-free’When George Chuter headed to the bar at Welford Road after a match, he would mix with the Leicester players of the 1950s and 60s and note their replacement body parts and aching limbs. “The degradation their bodies suffered in a much less impactful era brings it home to you what we’ve got coming,” he says now, two years on from the end of an 18-year rugby career of 440 matches that dates back to the dawn of the professional era. Relate…