Vas Nikolaou on Concussion Management in Schools and Grassroots Sport

Key takeaways

• Luca Health founder Vas Nikolaou was a recent podcast guest, discussing the state of concussion governance in UK schools and clubs.
• He argues that most schools and grassroots clubs still lack the documented protocols needed to meet their duty of care.
• The November 2024 UK Grassroots Concussion Guidelines raised the bar; most organisations have not yet caught up.
• Good concussion management is not just a clinical issue, it is a governance and safeguarding issue.
• Luca's approach is to make compliance a natural by-product of day-to-day management, not a separate administrative burden.

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Luca Health founder Vas Nikolaou recently appeared as a guest on a podcast to talk about concussion management in schools and grassroots sport - what the current standards require, where most organisations fall short, and what a genuinely defensible approach looks like. If you work in school or club sport and want to understand what good concussion governance actually demands in 2026, the conversation is worth your time.

You can watch the full episode on YouTube.

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What the conversation covers

Vas covers a lot of ground in the episode, but the thread running through it is this: concussion management in the community game is still treated primarily as a clinical question, when it is equally a governance question. Schools and clubs ask "do we have a first-aider who knows what to look for?" when they should also be asking "can we demonstrate, to a parent, an insurer, or an inspector, exactly what happened and what we did about it?"

That shift - from recognition to documented governance - is where Luca Health's thinking starts, and it is where the episode is most useful for anyone responsible for sport in a school or club setting.

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Why documentation is the gap most organisations miss

The UK Concussion Guidelines for Grassroots Sport (Sport and Recreation Alliance, November 2024 update) set a clear minimum standard. For under-18s, that includes a minimum 21-day stand-down before return to contact, a graduated return-to-play process, and a requirement that any return to sport follows symptom-free confirmation.

What the guidelines cannot do is guarantee those steps are being followed in practice. That is where documentation comes in. As Vas explains, the difference between a school with a policy and a school with a defensible governance trail is the difference between "we think we do this" and "here is the record of every step we took."

Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) requires schools to take reasonable precautions to protect pupils from foreseeable harm. A concussion sustained during a school rugby fixture, followed by a premature return to contact without documented clinical oversight, is the kind of event that looks very different in a safeguarding review if there is no paper trail.

Vas is clear on this in the podcast: most schools are not doing anything reckless. They are simply not recording what they do in a way that protects them, or the pupil.

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What duty of care actually means in practice

Duty of care in concussion is sometimes described as if it means "have a trained first-aider present." That is part of it. But it also means:

• Having a documented policy that staff know and can follow without improvising.
• Recording the incident, the symptoms observed, and the immediate action taken.
• Communicating with parents in a consistent and documented way.
• Following a structured graduated return-to-play protocol, not just waiting until the player "feels better."
• Keeping records long enough to be useful if a concern is raised months or years later.

The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 places a duty on employers, which includes schools, to ensure the health, safety and welfare of staff and anyone affected by their activities. Pupils on a school pitch are clearly within that scope.

None of this requires a clinical qualification. It requires a system that is followed consistently and recorded reliably. That is the governance case Vas makes on the podcast, and it is the problem Luca's platform is designed to solve.

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The difference between a policy and a protocol

One distinction Vas returns to is the difference between a policy (a document that says what the school intends to do) and a protocol (a live process that determines what actually happens when a concussion occurs).

Many schools have a policy. Far fewer have a protocol that is genuinely embedded - where every staff member knows their role, where the record-keeping is automatic rather than optional, and where the graduated return is managed in a structured way rather than left to an individual's judgement.

The Luca Safe Concussion Framework is built around this distinction. It provides a seven-domain structure that covers everything from initial identification to clinical clearance, designed to be implementable by non-clinical staff while maintaining clinical oversight at the stages that require it.

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What schools and clubs should take away

If you manage sport in a school or oversee welfare at a grassroots club, the podcast episode offers a useful, practical framework for thinking about where your current approach sits and where the gaps are. Three questions worth asking after you have watched it:

1. If a concussion occurred at your next fixture, could you produce a complete record of every step taken, from removal from the pitch to return to contact?
2. Do all staff who supervise sport know the removal and stand-down protocol, not just the first-aider?
3. Has your concussion policy been reviewed in the light of the November 2024 guidelines update?

If any of those answers is uncertain, that is the place to start.

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Sources

1. Sport and Recreation Alliance. UK Concussion Guidelines for Grassroots Sport (November 2024 update). https://sportandrecreation.org.uk/files/uk-concussion-guidelines-for-grassroots-non-elite-sport---november-2024-update-061124084139.pdf
2. Department for Education. Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE), current edition. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-education--2
3. UK Parliament. Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/contents
4. Vas Nikolaou. Podcast episode on concussion management in schools and grassroots sport. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRwYEOlIbiw

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Luca's governance framework gives schools and clubs the documented management trail their NGB, inspector, or insurer is increasingly asking for. Audit your current approach against the seven domains of the Luca Safe Concussion Framework.