If ever there was any doubt that modern-day sport was at a crossroads watch the current Rugby World Cup.
Sport has always had a gladiatorial element to it. Fans have enjoyed both the physical and mental stoushes. As UFC has shown they also like a bit of gore, the shedding of blood and the survival of the fittest.
The last element has gone from many sports, as the number of substitutes and the number of substitutions has increased on account of player welfare.
The truth is no one wants to see any player suffer an unneccesary injury. However injuries are a risk whenever you walk onto the field of play at any level of any sport. In fact the minute you take part in any physical exercise you run the risk of injury.
Those governing sport in this writer’s lifetime have introduced all manner of safety elements to try and reduce the risk of injury during top flight competition, but the fact is injuries still happen. Mouthguards were rare, footballers did not wear shin pads, cricketers wore little more than a box for protection. The first extra protection was the thigh pad and then the helmet.
The cricket helmet only really started to be seen regularly in the late 1970’s, but even then it was only worn by a few players. At the time former England Captain Tony Greig was of the opinion that helmets would make cricket more dangerous by encouraging bowlers to bounce the batsmen. It did not stop him wearing a motorcycle-style crash-helmet during World Series Cricket.
What would be interesting to know is how many Test batsman have been hit on the head since the introduction of helmets as opposed to those who were hit prior to their introduction.
There are many who feel that the wearing of a helmet and other protective clothing has seen batsmen in general let their standards of basic technique drop, and as a result we are seeing more batsmen being hit on the helmet. There is an element of truth in this as frequently those who are hit have taken their eye off the ball; the first thing everyone young athlete learns to do. Those who are hit frequently have neither ducked or swayed out of the way, as most would have been coached at a young age. Instead they have turned their back on the ball.
When the current World’s best batsman Stephen Smith was struck by Jofra Archer in the recent Ashes series Sir Ian Botham was one of the few commentators to comment that Smith’s unorthodox batting technique put him in a position where he was likely to find it hard to take evasive action. The key point being that as good as Smith’s eye is, his unorthodoxy played a key part in him being hit.
Sir Ian was another player with a good eye. Yet he too was struck a vicious blow to the head in the pre-helmet days. In a Benson and Hedges match against Hampshire in June 1974 his county side Somerset were in deep trouble chasing 182. Botham came in at number nine and with Hallam Moseley started to claw Somerset back into the match. Hamsphire brought back West Indian paceman Andy Roberts and Botham gloved a bouncer into his own face. He lost two teeth on the pitch, and two others were loosened and had to be removed the next day. Botham stayed at the crease, despite being concussed. In the penultimate over, now batting with the number 11, Botham struck a four to win the match and was named man of the Match. A hero had announced his arrival.
Today Botham would not have been allowed to play on. Today he would have been ruled out for several matches once he had tested positive to concussion. Today it is unlikely that he would have gone out to bat with a helmet. In fact today with video he may not have had the opportunity to hit the winning runs as his partner may well have been given run out.
Is the game better for the changes? Of course players are better off in terms of their safety.
Now in so many sports apart from the pressure officiating the game the referees and umpires are now being held responsible for player safety. Understandably we are seeing them erring on the side of caution in most situations. After all they do not want to be held accountable should a dreadful injury occur. Ask boxing referees who have been the third man in the ring when horrific injuries have occurred and they will tell you those fights haunt them forever.
At the Rugby World Cup we are seeing for the first time red cards being handed out far more than at any other time in the game. The reasons are correct in terms of the interpretation of the laws, and once again the decisions are being made in the interests of player safety.
Rugby has changed dramatically as a game since it turned professional. Players now can dedicate themselves solely to playing rugby and have become muscled monsters. ‘The bigger they are the harder they fall,’ used to be the catch cry of many a coach, it is still true today, but few have the technique to bring the big men down.
Instead of players tackling low, once the game started to turn professional and the players became bigger, and less players became involved in the ruck, and the game became more defensive-minded. Players tried to stay on their feet more, and as a result of all of these issues the tackles started to become higher. Instead of being around the knees, they started to be around the chest. The key was to simply to stop a player until support came to drag him to ground. Similar to a pride of Lions bringing down a Thomson’s gazelle.
Is it any coincidence therefore that 47 per cent of all match injuries are associated with the tackle? Was it as high as that back in the 1970’s and 1980’s?
The old highpoint for a tackle used to be from the shoulder down, but today with less space and less free running more and more players are stopping as the hit is coming. Owen Farrell, of England in their match against Argentina did just that, he also dropped down before being struck by Tomas Lavanini’s shoulder in the head. Watching the arms of the Argentinean player he was clearly looking to wrap up Farrell ball and all, but ended up smashing his shoulder into the Englishman’s head. By the letter of the law a red card was issued and Lavinini was rightly sent off. However how much did Farrell’s movement affect the outcome?
What is sad to see in Rugby Union now is fans and commentators baying for a red card in a match, when challenges come in. That is so far removed from what the game was always about. However, it was to be expected. This is the professional era, players are valuable commodities and winning is worth a great deal of money.
The trouble for the sport is that Rugby is not a game that can handle a team being a man down for long periods of time. The physicality of the game means that the player advantage will in most cases be decisive. In fact the extra work those 14 players are being required to do could well be another area to be looked at by those concerned with player welfare.
If this is the way forward maybe the player in question is still sent off. However instead of losing a man for the rest of the game his team could suffer a tenor fifteen minute penalty of playing a man down, and then one of the substitutes comes on to restore them to 15? Of course that could open the game up to having ‘enforcers’ who play to take out an opponent. If that were to happen the only option would be a lengthy ban for the player, such as six months to a year.
Rugby is in a very difficult space at this point in time. It is stuck between protecting the players and protecting the game. It has like many sports started down a path where its obligation is to now be a form of entertainment, rather than a simple sporting contest between two teams. It is caught between governing a sport where a small percentage of players are playing at the elite professional level, by comparison to those playing as amateurs. They are not alone in facing this problem.
Why does the amateur game have to follow the professional game? As stated the Professional game is now about entertainment. The amateur game is solely about sport and participation, being a part of a club and forming lifelong friendships.
The professional game may need to embrace that danger that now exists far more than ever before, but does that apply in the amateur ranks? Certainly there will still be those who tackle high, but in the main most adopt the old-school tackle low approach.
It is a fact that since the onset of professional rugby union players in 1995, there has been an increased incidence of rugby-associated injuries. Bathgate and coworkers’ data demonstrated a nearly two-fold increase in injury incidence per 1000 player hours after the start of the professional era (47 vs. 74 injuries per 1000 player hours, respectively). (Bathgate A, Best JP, Craig G, Jamieson M. A prospective study of injuries to elite Australian rugby union players. Br J Sports Med).
This would appear to be backed up in a study carried out in 2006 where the incidence of Rugby Union injuries was studied in the UNSW Rugby Union Injury Surveillance Study spanning eight years.
The results of the survey of 165,300 Australians aged 15 years and older showed that the injury rates at the elite level are greater than at the schoolboy level.
It revealed that Schoolboy injuries” occur at 16 injuries per 1,000 playing hours, compared with 43 injuries per 1,000 playing hours at elite level. Across the sport, average injury is decreasing from 36.2 injuries per 1,000 playing hours in 2000, down to 29 injuries per 1,000 playing hours in 2006.”
It may be worth mentioning here that during England’s victorious 2003 Rugby World Cup campaign Brooks and Associates reported the rate of injury at a rate of 218 injuries per 1000 player hours of exposure!
In the UNSW report it went on to state that “over 50% of injuries reported are minimal or mild, resulting in no lost games.”
It then claimed that “four body regions account for half of all Rugby Union injuries: shoulder (18%), knee (13%), thigh (12%) and ankle (12%). Sprain/strain injuries account for 58% of injuries. The tackle (52%), overexertion and overuse (14.5%) are also common.”
In the suggestions to avoid injuries there were thirteen areas highlighted. Of those thirteen seven referred to technique. For example, “Undertake a training program to develop skills and techniques before competition.” Along with “Good technique and practices will help prevent injury,”” Instruction on correct tackling technique, including falling, should be available across all levels of play,” and “Tackling should be the focus of regular skills training and be progressively introduced.”
It is interesting to note that 87% of what are deemed serious injuries that happen in International Rugby were associated with muscles, ligaments, or joints. These were injuries that saw players sidelined for three weeks or more.
Bathgate and associates subdivided their data associated with injury to the the lower limbs, which was the mots popular into regions and found these to be broken down to be injuries to the hip (2%), thigh (19%), knee (20%), lower leg (6%), ankle (11%) and foot (3.5%) injuries. They also found that training injuries to the lower extremities were common.
Of course the scrum is an area of concern. This has been identified as the area at all levels where spinal injuries are most likely to occur. Reports have shown that in Rugby “cervical spinal cord injury is usually the result of extreme neck flexion, with or without rotation or hyperextension of the C4, C5, and C6 vertebrae. This mechanism generally occurs during the scrum, in which a front-row player can have forces of up to 1.5 tons (approximately, 3300 lbs) exerted on their flexed cervical spine when engaged with the opposing team. This force often exceeds that which is required to cause compression failure of the vertebral body (4500 N) or ligamentous injury to the cervical spine (2000 N).44 Hooker players suffer approximately 30% of these injuries.43 Since the 1990s.” (Scher AT. Premature onset of degenerative disease of the cervical spine in rugby players).
What is a concern is that since the game turned professional there has been an increase in the proportion of spinal cord injuries occurring during the tackle. One report stated that these were most likely to occur early in the season and “to players lacking practice and physical conditioning.”
Max Brito is a man whose life was, like many others drastically changed through an injury on a rugby field. His injuries happened at the 1995 World Cup when playing for the Ivory Coast in South Africa, and left him paralysed. He should not be forgotten and all should be aware of the injuries that can occur playing rugby or any other sport. Yes there is a duty of care from administrators, and so too all players on the field of play. It should not just be left to the officials.
If Elite sport is to be entertainment it needs to sort out the predicament it finds itself in. But it should not throw the baby out with the bath-water. To make it entertainment at the highest level is fine, and rules can be changed to suit those needs, but do they need to be passed on down the ranks?
Research has shown that injuries occur far more at the highest level. However that should not lead to complacency. At the end of the day technique in every sport and so many other areas of life is crucial when it comes to success and avoiding injury. Maybe there needs to be much larger focus on technique moving forward to try and eradicate the level of injury?
