John MacDonald: Sometimes a ban isn't the answer

It would be very easy for me to say that the organisers of those ridiculous Run it Straight combat sport events have blood on their hands after the tragic death of 19-year-old Ryan Satterthwaite.   And I would be saying that if Ryan had been involved in an official event. The thing is, he wasn’t.   That’s not stopping other people from piling in though. There are experts saying today that we need to ban the whole thing. But I don’t think that’s realistic.   Because for starters, banning officially organised events wouldn’t stop the likes of what happened in Palmerston North on Sunday when Ryan was hanging out with mates and when they decided to give it a go.   So this thing’s gone nuts on social media. It involves two people running directly at each other and slamming into one another.   The people behind it are touting it as the world’s fiercest combat sport, which is all about mirroring the extreme collisions you sometimes see happen during the likes of rugby and rugby league matches.   You’re bound to have seen the pictures from a couple of official events held up north in the last couple of weeks.   I’ve seen it reported that there might have been a couple of concussions and anyone who’s had a concussion will know that they’re not a walk in the park.  I saw one of the organisers banging-on about having medical people on-hand and how all the competitors are checked before and afterwards. Nevertheless, there’s no way you’d get me involved.  But what it all comes down to for me is those two words you hear trotted out quite often about all sorts of things: personal responsibility. Or personal choice.   There was Ryan with his mates on a Sunday afternoon, and they thought they’d give Run it Straight a go – just for a laugh.  Just like any other bunch of young guys, they’d seen the stuff on social media and would’ve seen the news coverage of the recent events held up north and decided to give it a go.   A ban of any type wouldn’t stop that kind of thing happening. Tragically.    But even though I think we’re dreaming if we think a ban is needed, there are a couple of things we could do.   I agree with Stacey Mowbray from Headway —which is a concussion support organisation— who is saying that education could be key to trying to do something about this situation. She says parents need to sit down with their kids and talk to them about the dangers of all this.   The other thing that I think we should be doing is to do what we can to take away some of the glamour around this so-called sport.   For example, I think the likes of the Christchurch City Council should decline any requests to hold Run it Straight events at any of its facilities.   That wouldn’t stop people like Ryan Satterthwaite and his mates giving it a go, but it would send a very clear message that Run it Straight doesn’t have the support of the local community.   But I think that’s about as far as we can go.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.