Saracens are currently on a mission to change the rugby world. But unlike the calls for scraping the Premiership salary cap, this innovation looks to be of benefit to everyone. The Watford based franchise have been trialling behind the ear sensors that will hopefully help in the identification of concussions.
Concussion Patch
The patches, which made their debut in Saturday's game against London Irish, is called the xPatch and is designed to measure size and angles of hits taken by a player.
Saracens rugby players wore a hi-tech device yesterday, xPatch, containing an accelerometer to detect concussion risk pic.twitter.com/dfVgwcB4EJ
— Paul Norbury (@pauljnorbury) January 4, 2015
The patch, which is produced by X-2 Bio-systems in Seattle, have been pioneered in the NFL and at the moment provide information after the game in regards to various hits. Saracens hope to develop the technology so that it provides real time information.
It appears to be a big step in the issue of concussion that is very prominent in rugby at the moment, not least with the issues surrounding Johnny Sexton and Neil Francis's article yesterday.
Hopefully, this should clear up any confusion people who watched the game had about the mysterious patches:
@LiRFC has anyone else noticed a weird patch behind ears of specific Saracens players? Communication devices?
— Sparky (@sparkyhughes11) January 3, 2015
