As of January 3, 2017, World Rugby’s new zero-tolerance approach to reckless and accidental head contact will begin the process of saving rugby union from itself. As of Wednesday’s announcement, professional coaches will be working out ways to take advantage of the new laws.
The game’s governing body has acted decisively. While the headlines are related to the here and now of the high tackle and the dark cloud that is concussion, recognition of the problem goes further. The great strength of the sport has become its potential Achilles Heel. Rugby fans’ love of the sport has always been of the tough variety. As with American football, supporters simply adore the “big hits” in the same way that a previous generation loved a good old scrap.
The latter has been eradicated, with handbags replacing fists, but the game is infinitely more brutal than ever. Professionalism equates with better conditioning, superior athleticism and much more. While the sport is more skilful than before, the gulf between the skills levels of now and the amateur era is measurable. That cannot be said for the quantum leap in the condition of the protagonists, who have been turned into gladiators.
This, combined with the need to win, has helped create the “hit” culture. Former players don’t talk about tackles as much as the “hit” and the hits are higher than ever because tackling around the shoulders prevents players offloading the ball.
Dylan Hartley’s “tackle” against Leinster was not that different to plenty seen any Saturday. The swinging arm and intent to dislodge the ball is one of rugby’s recent defensive developments; hitting hard and high leads to more head injuries. The elite set the tone and the tone has taken on a dark and dangerous hue, albeit for the most part inadvertently.
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World Rugby is looking beyond its own governing period for the long-term benefit. Players are not going to get smaller, slower and weaker. We are on a crash course with collision rugby that will destroy the sport.
Rugby union has to find a way to depower itself while its gladiators get bigger and bigger. The only way is to act against the impact. A redefined high tackle category with increased sanctions to deter high tackles is the first stage to depowering the sport and not its participants.
The by-product of tackling lower, designed to ensure an absence of even accidental contact from the shoulders upwards, will be more offloads. High tackles didn’t drip into the culture of the game through malicious intent to hurt opponents. The idea was to eradicate attack. The concussion crisis is the consequence of new, sophisticated defences.
Had World Rugby not acted the sport would have continued down the road beyond Tokyo to a terminal decline sometime in the future. World Rugby’s global education programme recognises the universality of the issue but it is, of course, the role models’ reactions that matter most.
What will be the reactions of the professional entourage? They will pay lip service even as they work on ways to turn the new laws to their own advantage. It would not surprise me to see players carrying the ball with lower body angles. There may even be a surge of selection for the structurally challenged. I recall a game I played against Gloucester — a while back, admittedly — where controversial penalties awarded for high tackles on yours truly turned the game Bath’s way.
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The match reporter wondered how a 6ft 6in second row could do anything but high tackle a 5ft 6 (and a half) fly-half. He had a point. With arch irony he continued that perhaps back lines would soon be full of midgets. Who knows, the moment might have arrived. From January 3, the tackler will once more be disadvantaged. The scrutiny on the hit will make it too draconian for some.
But the lowering of the height of the tackle is important. For more than 100 years, the sport focused on tackling techniques that started around the waist and lassoed down the legs — that mindset was changed by professionalism. Reverting to that old thought process will make the head safer now, just as it was back then.
Under Bill Beaumont, World Rugby has shrugged off its former toothless International Rugby Board persona and become a governing body with vision and the courage to act. Leadership cannot be left to the professional elite because, cutting edge as they are, these bodies are driven by the immediate.
Blinkered to just about everything bar results, the professional game cannot be trusted to see, let alone solve, the problems. World Rugby has stepped in and saved the sport from its own progress.