For those of us who argue against the oversanitisation of rugby in the quest for a safer sport, particularly regarding head injuries, there is always a strong counterargument that makes our position appear fragile.
Pat Lambie, the Springbok and Sharks flyhalf whose career was cut short due to concussion, is a ready example from the not too distant past. A more recent one is the highly promising young Stormers lock David Meihuizen, who last year called time on his career at the age of just 24 on the advice of medical specialists.
But it is not only the players who must retire early, or feel the consequences of head injuries after they retire, that keep reminding us what a dangerous sport rugby is. JJ Kotze and Jean-Luc du Plessis were on Friday night added to a long list of Stormers players who suffered concussion recently.
At least one of those, Manie Libbok, was concussed in an incident in which there was foul play. Or, to put it differently, where a law was transgressed. I use that qualification because what was considered within the laws 10 years ago often isn’t now.
Libbok was tackled dangerously and while the transgressor was red carded, and the commentators and opposition coach were right to contend it ruined the Stormers vs London Irish game, it also ruled Libbok out of his team’s next few fixtures.
But it is not just concussions that can threaten a player’s availability to play, or even end his career. The list of players who had careers seriously inhibited or curtailed by serious knee ligament injuries is probably much longer than the one related to concussion. We’re not just talking about the time a player has to spend away from the game, but the long-term effect, such as loss of pace.
Consistency problem
As it turns out, the Stormers have a new example in Evan Roos to add to the one they already had (Salmaan Moerat) regarding players ruled out long term because of ligament injuries. In Roos’s case the injury was caused by a “crocodile roll”, which is illegal, but wasn’t picked up or sanctioned by the officials on duty in the Belfast game. However, it was picked up the next night when Sharks prop Carlu Sadie was guilty of the same in the game against Edinburgh.
Aah, there’s that old problem of consistency. The Sadie incident was easy to miss by a less hawkish TMO. As the Belfast incident proved. The point though is that the two acts, which both risked ligament damage, were equally as livelihood threatening as high tackles and mid-air collisions that bring about head injuries.
And if World Rugby (RFU) pushes through with the move started by England to have the tackle height lowered, doesn’t that make the knee area even more vulnerable than it already is?
There is also the argument forwarded by coaches and players who rightly feel they haven’t been properly consulted on this mooted law change that concussion is often caused by heads banging into thigh bones. Which there would likely be more of if the law goes through, not to mention whiplash (heads hitting the ground after a legal low tackle).
The RFU move would have been guided by sports science, so there must be evidence that lowering the tackle height will lower the instances of concussion and head injuries. It may just be a matter of time though before there is another scientific study with a slightly different focus that will show us that the new law could increase the number of knee and ligament injuries.
Feeling frustrated
This feeds into the point I am getting to: rugby is a dangerous sport. It will never be a completely safe sport unless you change it to something that will be unrecognisable from the sport we identify with. The mooted tackle law change points us in that direction and has been rightly described as seismic by some commentators.
Yes, a strict focus on tackle height might well make rugby more entertaining by making it easier to pass the ball through the tackle. But it should also translate into an increase in penalties and cards, and in the professional game more time for spectators to sit around feeling frustrated while referees and TMOs pore over video footage.
If there is a threat to the popularity of rugby, it is the increasingly stop-start nature of the modern game. And the blight of red cards. There will be more of those, for what World Rugby is asking for is text-book perfection.
The drive to make the sport safer is valid, but how do you achieve that without further complicating a sport that is already too complicated? There’s no rugby player who goes onto the field not knowing it is a dangerous sport. By playing it, they buy into the risks. Care should be taken that the quest to make the player’s livelihood safer doesn’t end up killing it.
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