It may not have been the most memorable opening two rounds of a tournament in terms of the quality of rugby played, but the 2015 Six Nations has had fans and pundits chattering away like few before it. Worryingly, most of the talk has been around several concerning safety issues.
Week one saw Wales wing George North remain on the pitch after two fairly brutal looking knocks to the head, the second of which led to a shocking moment when he collapsed to the ground seemingly unconscious. The Welsh medical team have been cleared of all wrongdoing, but it confirmed that, despite the strides that have been made in recent years to tackle the concussion issue, rugby still has a long way to go in this area.
Whether the medical staff saw it or not, the fact that millions watching on television at home saw that he clearly should not have remained on the pitch, but not one person of influence in the stadium deemed that he should come off, is massively alarming. Independent pitchside doctors, as will be used in the World Cup, must be commonplace everywhere – no-one with a vested interest in the team can make a truly objective decision on a player’s condition.
Johnny Sexton returned to Ireland’s team to play France last weekend after a lengthy recovery from concussion problems. France’s answer was to send big runners down his channel all afternoon, which makes sense as a tactic, but when the sickening blow occurred between his and Mathieu Bastareaud’s heads, you had to wonder what long term damage might be caused. Hours earlier, Mike Brown had lain prone on the Twickenham turf for several minutes, a concerned hush around the stadium as fans could only guess at the seriousness of the injury.
These are all freak accidents, but they are happening with an increased regularity that means soon, the word ‘freak’ will no longer be appropriate. Certainly, I can’t remember the beginning of a tournament that has produced so much controversy in terms of player wellbeing.
Where is the solution? That is the million dollar question. Undoubtedly part of the problem is the sheer size of the players these days. They are behemoths, often over 20 stones of muscle moving at an incredible rate. Anyone trying to stop that is always going to be susceptible to injury.
Can you impose a weight limit on players? Maybe, but where would the line be? It would rule out those who are naturally big – think Vunipolas or Tuilagis. We’ve passed the point of no return for a weight limit – players are simply so big these days that it would be impossible to come up with something sensible.
There is a more sinister issue here. This is the first real generation of players this size, so we don’t really know what the long term effects are going to be yet. We’ll be looking at those results in a couple of decades’ time; for now, we can only hope the horrific type of story that has been seen in the NFL isn’t what we’re looking at.
Week two’s main talking point came from another Wales game, where two tackles on a man in the air were penalised with yellow cards. Finn Russell first took out Dan Biggar, pulling out of a challenge at the last minute, his eyes clearly on the approaching man and not the ball, his feet firmly on the floor, as Dan Biggar catches the ball and is then taken out, landing on his shoulder/neck area.
Video credit: RBS 6 Nations
The second saw Jonathan Davies tussle with Johnnie Beattie while both players were in the air, and Davies clearly had eyes only for the ball. If Davies had caught the ball (he ended up wrapping his arms around Beattie but this is only because he had them open, ready to take the ball) rather than the man, would a yellow card, or even a penalty, have been given?
Video credit: RBS 6 Nations
Both were dangerous challenges that warranted some form of punishment as serious harm could have come to the players that landed awkwardly. After the second incident involving Davies, you can hear referee Glen Jackson on his mic saying to the departing centre that “it’s the same”, meaning he viewed it as an equal to the Russell challenge earlier. After repeated viewing, he has probably come to conclusion that it is not.
There are a myriad of laws and directives from World Rugby on this issue, to the point where it’s incredibly difficult to know what the correct call is. Jerome Garces sent Jared Payne off for taking Alex Goode out in the air in a Heineken Cup game almost a year ago now, and yet nobody – least of all the referees, who have tough enough a job just enforcing the laws, let alone ensuring player safety – seem to know quite what warrants a red card, and what is just a yellow.
The contest in the air after a kick is a fascinating part of rugby but if it cannot be policed evenly, then it shouldn’t be there. Every challenge is going to be different which is why it can’t be left up to the referees, who get one viewing in real time, to make the decision. The TMO should certainly be used more, but even then it remains difficult to know what kind of challenge is worse than another, as the Russell and Davies incidents this weekend prove.
Again, a solution is incredibly difficult to find. Ban all contests for the ball in the air? Perhaps, but it takes away an intriguing part of the game and negates the skillset of many top players. Any ideas, I’m sure, would be gladly received at World Rugby HQ.
Matt Dawson yesterday tweeted the image on the right, of the latest rugby headlines on BBC Sport. Four were about injury-enforced retirements, two were about weekend injuries that would keep players out of the next game at least, while precisely zero were about any actual rugby that happened on the pitch.
The Rugby World Cup will doubtless be a fine spectacle and good advert for rugby, but if players are being felled left, right and centre, missing large swathes of their career and sometimes even being forced to retire, is it really going to inspire the average punter to pick up a ball, or more importantly, encourage their kids to do so?
We all love this sport and want to see it prosper, but any viewing pleasure cannot outweigh the wellbeing of the players. It has got to the stage where there is a rarely a game in which there is not some sort of injury or safety controversy. Something has to change, but the issue is, nobody seems to know quite what.
By Jamie Hosie
Follow Jamie on Twitter: @jhosie43
Photo by: Patrick Khachfe / Onside Images
23 replies on “Myriad of safety concerns are a real problem in Rugby World Cup year”
With regards to challenges in the air, I think what they are trying to say is that if you can’t compete reasonably, you can’t just charge in under the pretense of competing for the ball. So if you aren’t in with a good shot of actually beating the man in the air and catching it, you should slow down and compete on the ground.
I think they should look at the tip tackle for a bit of guidance.
If you collide with a man in the air and the referee and TMO deem it not to be a reasonable challenge (ie you don’t have a reasonable chance of winning the ball), then a penalty and a yellow card should be issued (think JD on the weekend). You might not do any damage, but recklessly challenging for the ball should be discouraged as you COULD do damage. Just as you would get if you picked someone up in a tackle and recklessly dropped them.
However, if you collide with a man in the air AND he tips (think Russell on Biggar), then it is very dangerous and, if the referee and TMO deem that you never had a reasonable chance of winning the ball, then that should be a penalty and a red. Just as you would get if you picked someone up in a tackle and tipped them.
If two players go up for the same ball and both have a reasonable chance of winning it, then you can’t give a penalty/sanction to either one regardless of the outcome, as rugby is all about fair contests for the ball. It would be like carding someone if they hurt someone else in a fair tackle.
For me, the key judgement is whether someone had a reasonable chance of winning the ball. Whether they tipped or not to make it a red should not require any judgement.
I like the general idea with where you’re going with that – but I think there are a couple flaws.
Firstly, what is “reasonable attempt”? Quite ambiguous. For example, Jonathan Davies to me did not look like a reasonable attempt to me, he was never winning it, but I’ve seen some on here suggest otherwise.
But I also have an issue with your comparison to the tackle; they differ quite a bit. In a tip tackle that turns into a red card; the player is in control of the opposition player and drives them into the ground, or in lifting them has lost control of them – therefore his error.
With competing for the high ball, a challenger can conceivably turn a guy on his head with minimal contact due to the speed and fact they are not grounded. This is therefore far further out of their control than that tip tackle. Can we leave the difference between a yellow and a red down to pure chance?
“and Davies clearly had eyes only for the ball”
Not sure I agree with that. Certainly he was watching the ball, but to say he “only” had eyes for the ball suggests that he didn’t see Beattie, which I find very hard to believe.
Generally, I think that leaping for the ball should be out-lawed, unless they are supported (as in line-outs or re-start receipts).
I understand that is a piece of high skill (as exemplified by some Welsh players on Sunday) and when executed well, it looks great, but surely as the article notes, a big problem is not far away.
I would agree with you on the leaping aspect, it does cause a lot of problems. It would also solve a lot of the ambiguity about whose fault/responsibility/intentions etc.
A second point as well regarding the eyes, no one seems to be commenting on Finn’s eyes in this, to me Finn at full speed on the video also has “only eyes for the ball”, he only looks straight ahead just before the resulting collision, he may have seen Biggar in his peripheral vision prior to that but certainly would have not much idea about how far away or the direction of his motion, depth perception just doesn’t work in that part of your vision.
Taking that logic a bit further and imagining a slightly different scenario, but assume for a moment that instead Finn has already judged the trajectory of the ball and already arrived at the location to catch the ball and remains on the ground ready and continues to watch the ball. Arguably this is no different to what he actually was intending to do in reality only the time at which the events occur are different. Biggar continues to do exactly the same, leaps high for the ball and then proceeds to topple himself over Finn and again landing badly. Is this still a yellow for Finn, I would argue that the laws would say not, he has no obligation to move out of ground he already occupies and in this instance with fractionally different timing, Biggar’s leap becomes a reckless move of his own doing and the result being entirely his own fault. As pointed out in the article, if circumstances are fractionally different in the Davies case (i.e. the location of Beattie’s arms), then Davies is no longer at fault here either.
I’m not saying here that Finn is without blame in the incident that actually happened, I personally think a yellow was the right call in both instances, both men in the run up to the incident were clearly trying to gain a position where they thought they would access the ball (it looks from the footage that for the large part both were concentrating on acheiving their aim of, Finn on the ground, Davies in the air) and both got it wrong. What I am trying to suggest is that in real time, the margins of it all being fine and it all going horribly wrong are incredibly fine and stopping wild leaps in the air would be one way of addressing this.
You do realise that the WRU has two independent doctors on it’s matchday team, despite their being no requirement from World Rugby for them to do so?
If the WRU employ them; they are by definition, not independent.
Where did I say that the WRU employ them? Read what is written, not what you want to see…
& claiming that ” no-one with a vested interest in the team can make a truly objective decision on a player’s condition.” is grossly insulting to anyone who has sworn the Hippocratic oath.
Would you go so far as to name these individuals who, despite being members of the medical profession, you feel have vested interests and are unable to be objective?
I sincerely doubt it as you know full well that to do so would be potentially libelous so you simply pen vacuous piffle.
Why would a rugby blog sling mud at a medical professional in that way? Seems a strange comment.
Considering World Rugby have chosen to introduce medical professionals outside of employment from specific rugby unions it seems as though this article as based on the fact that World Rugby agree, and not some sort of attack of medical professionals.
Rhys, apologies if it came across as an attack on the Welsh – it wasn’t meant in that way. I didn’t realise the Welsh team had independent doctors present either, and it’s good to hear that they do.
It was merely an example, because as far as I’m aware, that is not commonplace with most sides. What I’m suggesting is that it should be compulsory for independent doctors to be present at every game, regardless of who is playing, and they should be assessing anyone with concussion worries.
I’m not sure you can remove the high ball contest from the game, I’m certain there is a town in Limerick that would have a great deal to say about that. I agree that a weight limit isn’t viable either.
Nor am I surprised at the BBC publishing so many stories about concussion/injuries, they are a news organisation looking to report on subjects their audience will be interested in talking about, anyone with even a passing interest would notice that the rugby community is keen on talking about concussion.
I just think we need to focus on the fact that its actually getting better, the concussion protocols have been introduced recently and in time will get more effective, be that a TMO responsibility or not, lets hope the days of this http://www.therugbysite.com/blog/conditioning-injury-management/fritz-mistreatment-who-is-responsible are behind us.
With regards to the size of players issue, perhaps the most level-headed response I have read was a while back from Austin Healey (I am aware of the madness of writing ‘level-headed’ and ‘Austin Healey’ in the same sentence… never thought that would happen). He suggested increasing the amount of time the ball is in play – i.e. stop the clock for reset scrums and goal kicks. We know the actual ‘ball in play’ time for matches hovers around the 30 minute mark (a shockingly low figure), rising to mid 30s for European matches and in the 40s for internationals. I remember the England v France match last year was ball in play time of 47 minutes or something, the longest any England player had experienced (hence why they all started cramping)…
What this will do is force players to be more aerobically fit, rather than be simply bulky, muscle-loaded players. The physics suggest a 20+ stone behemoth simply cannot last a full, international paced playing time of 40 minutes. Instead we will see players streamline themselves, and whilst no one wants to see all the big hits leave rugby (it’s part of the reason we love it), surely if we have our big carriers at around 16/17 stone, rather than 19/20 it will lower the impact of the collisions and reduce the number of tragic injury-enforced retirements.
It may also leave a bit more room for the Shane Williams/Christian Wade kind of player, something which is becoming increasingly rare – to the detriment of the game…
The original article is here if anyone is interested:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/club/11137206/Rugby-needs-to-alter-its-laws-and-restructure-the-season-to-tackle-serious-injuries.html
It is indeed a real delema for IRB. Ideally the catcher should be allowef to come to ground and in fact that happens more often than not. It should be up to the referee to decide in the case of two players going for high ball,as to who is making a genuine effort and who is not. If it is clear that one player is making no effort,then this should be yellow or red. (The citing panel can debate later whether it should have been yellow or red) .If both players are making genuine effort,with eyes on the ball and incident happens then perhaps no action should be taken. Its a very difficult one but that is my two bobs worth!
There arent that many players over 20st playing rugby! You cant legislate for size, but you can get the coaches to stop turning these players into gym monkeys. Look at New Zealand’s players? Anyone done a comparative concussion study between the NH and the SH? Technique, the desire to smother tackle to stop offloads rather than tackle properly has caused some of these problems. Its not an easy thing to deal with.
For clarity, I think Russell deserved a yellow for a dangerous tackle. That said…
Watching the footage closely, Russell is sprinting to challenge, then he sees he is not gong to be in time given Biggar’s leap and “stops” in one step. Could he have changed direction or stopped quicker to not contact Biggar at all? Possibly, but I am not sure. there was very little time or space and he had a fair bit of momentum. Additionally, he did not move under Biggar, it was Biggar who had the greatest horizontal movement. So what should Russell have done? Not even run to challenge?
While banning the tackling of a player in the air is a good idea to safeguard players, it is more far reaching. You are not allowed to touch an opposition player in the air. If Russell had tried to grab Biggar and bring him down safely, which he may have been able to do, it would have resulted in at least a penalty. should this be encouraged? possibly controlling a player in the air is a freekick, but a tackle or knock resulting in them landing off their feet is a penalty and potential card? (Having put this down in type it is beginning to look a little flimsy, so please consider it “thinking aloud”)
Blub there are merrits to your idea, but how do you referee whether someone has jumped. How do you not jump. It is almost involuntary. When you are competting for the ball with someone your own height of taller. Running to claim a ball you may be judged to have “jumped” due to the stretch in your step as you take the ball. someone passes a ball for you to run onto that is too high, do you not jump for it in mid stride, even though no one is within 5 yards of you?
Why not say that players are only allowed to jump for kicked balls from stationary. Ban running jumps. players must reach the point the ball is falling, stop and jump, or can take the ball on the run without jumping.
Don’t think it is putting it as flimsily as you think, in fact replied a very similar post directly to Blub farther up then scrolled down to find your comment from half an hour earlier, oh well, but I like the thought about standing jumps, resonates with what I was thinking about having rights to a piece of ground by dint of being there first, similarly as you would in a ruling over blocking or not a chaser of a kick.
Mike, Liono – lots of valid points. I too, think that Yellow was right in both cases. I actually have more sympathy for Russell than for Davies because I can understand Russell keeping his eyes on the ball, as he is safely on the ground.
I cannot believe that anyone would take a running leap for the ball without knowing what/who is around them.
How do you police not jumping for the ball? I’m not sure, as the more I consider it the more ambiguity seems to drip in.
I did notice a suggestion on social media, that the kicking team should be banned from competing for a kicked ball. Initial response is that this is daft, but on consideration perhaps not so much.
Im in agreement with Mike here, standing jumps is a good, safer idea.
No matter whether it looks great and that it is a quality skill to jump high to claim, the jumps put the player in danger. Bigger was always going to be in trouble. I base this on the fact that, watched in real-time, Russell realises he has mucked up but has no time to alter his position. He tries his best, but there’s not really much one can do. He was going for the safe option of catching while on the ground – and because of that, being in the place the ball was about to land, he suddenly sees Biggar emerge above him, and gets penalised. Biggar willfully puts himself in a dangerous position – brave, and by the letter of the law he is protected for the positive aspect of that bravery. But nevertheless I feel a contract of potential injury is signed if a player chooses to go into the air. Why do I feel the defender should be given priority here instead? Because in essence, its no different to jumping out of the tackles – which is already illegal. Why is it illegal? Because it endangers the tackler, but also in many ways the runner too. Just because the player doesn’t have the ball yet shouldn’t change that. Anyone remember Lee Byrne’s jumping style? Often with a studded foot raised to chest height in the direction of the opposition. So it is just as dangerous to both sides as hurdling a tackle.
Jumping is dangerous, and should be far more regulated than it is. And it leads to penalties and send-offs against players who had absolutely no intent to cause injury – are you really telling me that in all these situations, a professional player is prepared to jeopardise the oppositions health, his own too, and the prospects of his team knowing its a guaranteed yellow at best? Very very rarely do I think a player will reason that is a good idea.
In short, running jumps should be as illegal as jumping tackles, for all the same reasons.
With regard to the size and power of modern players I think it worth noting that in a lot of cases we aren’t talking about purely natural size/physique.
If that were so then players today would not be significantly bigger than their counterparts from yesteryear.
Today there is an entire industry devoted to growth supplements, size and muscle mass development,explosive power etc. Professional rugby has bought into this culture in a huge way.
A weight limit wouldn’t need to even be considered if this was done away with and training / gym work was scaled back accordingly.
Yes ,you would always have naturally big lads but they wouldn’t have their natural physical attributes boosted by products which didn’t exist even ten years ago.
The obvious conclusion would be that injuries would be less severe,careers would be lengthened,and most importantly young players ,many of whose bodies are still going through natural development,would not be subjected to the extra stress and strain brought about by the need/desire to be as big and muscular as possible.
Of course this will be met with derision in some circles but I really feel that Rugby Union has to reclaim it’s identity as a game for all shapes and sizes not a mongrel that tries to transplant elements of American Football into it’s own unique identity.
So erm, how do you see that working? Players are banned from the gym? They can run around outside in training as long as they don’t pick up anything too heavy? Limited protein intake, only one steak a week? Completely unworkable…..
Errr,I don’t know mate. MMMM.lets think, did players never go to the gym or pick up a weight before the pro era? Was training banned? Did I suggest ANY of this in my original comment? Learn to read and analyse son.
I don’t think SJB’s questions were in any way ridiculous. Before the Pro-era the level of knowledge around sports science was nothing compared to what it is now. It was quite a simple question, how could you idea actually be implemented?
Why would pro payers stop going when it clearly gives them an advantage on the pitch?