Rugby union is in rapid response mode. No sooner had 73 doctors, health and sport experts signed an open letter demanding a ban on tackling in school rugby than another set of experts was busy rebuffing the suggestion.
Matt Perry, the former Bath, England and Lions full back, asked, “If you take the tackle out of rugby what have you got left?” Brian Moore, the former Harlequins and England hooker, described the evidence as “flawed” and “partial”. The rugby community is up in arms. The RFU issued an extended riposte, seemingly within minutes of the open letter making its first waves. Well done to the RFU’s rapid response unit.
But best of all from the perspective of the sport was the support of Jonathan Sexton and George Ford. These are not fly halves in the mould of Jonny Wilkinson. These artists could do without the yeoman task of tackling but both readily rubbished the idea of a ban.
“The danger to children devolves from the top down
The “experts” who sent their concerned letter, effectively to the nation, are “experts” in medical fields but on the subject of rugby union they are decidedly not. The England and Ireland fly halves are and they understand the implications.
Rugby would be ruined at school level, leaving only clubs to save the sport in the United Kingdom. And that use of the word “save” is not deliberately dramatic. Without the development of tackling skills the foundations for future adult rugby players are pulled from beneath their feet. Tackling needs to be learnt from an early age for players’ future safety.
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Technique — not the tackle — is the problem. The signatories to the letter do us a service by bringing the health and safety issue into the public domain. I hope rugby’s community does not instinctively dismiss the letter as political correctness.
It is all well and good for the RFU to say that it takes “player safety extremely seriously” and for the department of education to waffle on about how the sport “teaches them [children] to bounce back from defeats . . . respect others . . . work together to realise goals”. There is nothing wrong with taking pride in a game you love but rugby union has an occasional habit of tipping over into a heady state of inebriated pomposity. More than fine words are required because the medics, sports and health experts have a point. It’s just that the conclusion is nonsense.
Tackling must not be banned. It needs to be refereed rigidly at the professional level. I remember the tackle poster on the wall of the changing rooms at Bassaleg School. We were taught to tackle, step by step, from the kneeling position, through to the wrap of the arms around the attacker with head placement ensuring that the tackled did not roll on to the tackler; like learning to walk. And it worked for more than a hundred years.
But the letter’s signatories do not comprehend that the problem is not with the laws of the game but the lax interpretations. Last week I addressed the subject of rugby evolving from a contact to a collision sport. The danger to children devolves from the top down.
One of the experts claims that the study has been 12 years in the undertaking. In that time the brutality of the sport has changed it into something far more intimidating than the game which I fell in love with 42 years ago.
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There was so little rugby on television that even if there had been an army of stiff-armed tacklers we would rarely have seen them. Ironically, the great exception of the 1970s was JPR Williams. The good doctor loved an illegal shoulder charge.
Now, the sport saturates the airwaves. What professionals do is more influential to schoolchildren than an old step-by-step tackle poster. The role models strengthen the case for the anti-tackle brigade. Referees tolerate shoulder hits below the neck. Spectators “ooh” as opponents crumple. No wonder we have more concussion and sub-concussive injuries than ever. Kids emulate their heroes but the heroes and referees are of an era when anything other than the “big hit” is anathema to professional rugby.
The RFU needs to accept that there is a problem while sidestepping this silly suggestion. The laws remain in place but the will to referee them is not. If the sport has to step back from the “thrill” of a shoulder charge with the faux “other arm” coming into play only when the opponent is down and out, good.
Dr Allyson Pollock, the pressure group’s most public face, wants to “put children before the corporate game”. This comment knowingly links rugby to American football with its intimations of cover-ups. Collision has long been king in that sport. Any downgrading of the gladiatorial aspect is perceived as a threat to this mega-money sport that panders to our violent instincts.
Looking at the way the professional game is coached and refereed, it is impossible not to see similarly excessive physical trends developing. There is a threat to youngsters taking up the game but it emanates from the professional game and not a 13-year-old tackling their little heart out.
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When refereed according to the law book, rugby union’s risks are inside the bounds of acceptability. Alas, when refereed as it often is at the highest level, well, that is another matter. The overflowing example of “big hits” from the professional game is the cause for future and immediate concern.