General Rugby Discussion 3

stephen_n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119394250#Comment_119394250

This was a four year ban reduced to two years so I can't see how it would have been reduced if the doping agency had any grounds to believe the retirement was "conveniently backdated".

He admitted to taking them for four months before the test. They clearly didn’t care about the retirement date.

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119395886#Comment_119395886

The point I'm trying to make is that he had retired before he was tested and found guilty. It would be impossible for him to retire because of a failed drugs test unless he was a time traveller.

Long multi-page piece in the Sunday times this morning about Siobhan Cattigan, a Scottish international forward. She wasn’t someone I was aware of, but took her own life at 26 after repeated and severe concussions that were pushed under the rug. Her family has joined a class action suit against the SRU, who are clearly circling the wagons. Shocking story.

As this stuff builds up it’s difficult to see how WR and the unions defend the class actions and where rugby goes

worth picking up the paper if interested. Online is subscription only

errlloyd

Here is a link to the nonpaywalled piece. I think everyone should read it.

https://archive.ph/x0gf0

Here are some of my thoughts.

There is a podcast called Revisionist History with an episode called "burden of proof". The episode is centred around an 'all American' kid who was the football captain at UPenn and died to suicide in an extremely similar way to Siobhan.

The host malcolm Gladwell begins the episode by playing a an excerpt for a speech he gave at UPenn where he asked the students (effectively) how long they'd continue to support a team and sport that was effectively killing their peers and refusing to acknowledge it.

I've been asking myself the same question for years. I've wondered should I ask the question on here a few times. Are we complicit. Do we as fans create the glory that young men and women are willing to lay down their lives to achieve? If we can't trust unions to protect players, how do we mobilise to do it.

sydthebeat

That's an incredible article. So tragic and sad in the lack of support given to Siobhan and her family, and just as bad what they failed to do afterwards.

Paul Smeenus

That is a bloody tough read.

Dave_The_Sheep

It really was. Very rough.

Former Former Former

Grim stuff.

I'm sure the SRU would dispute a lot of it but not paying respect ahead of the Calcutta Cup match, when that was the first game after her death, looks absolutely appalling.

Burkie1203

The Bernard jackman article in the Indo today is fairly stark

eagle eye

Things have to change and they are. In kids rugby in this country you can only tackle below the waist and that'll probably make its way to the top of the game.

I'm fully behind changes to make the game safer and prevent CTE.

I'm not happy with how the game is right now with ridiculous yellow cards and sending offs over accidental head contact in most cases. It's the Union that are responsible for these things happening and not the players. Change the rules to make sure it doesn't happen.

I’d rather see the quantity rather than the quality / type of product changed. And is also an easier fix. The guys on The Ruck podcast were referencing the NFL and the length of their season, and I’ve also heard one or two other pros mention it and suggest that they need to be playing 40-50% of the current number of games at a maximum. I’d be happier to see the physicality not changed in a meaningful way, but rather the length of the season and regularity of matches addressed.

I just don’t see this happening though, in the short term, as structures would have to be fundamentally changed and investors in the various leagues would end up sitting on large losses. And the NFL, as a comparable, doesn’t have international competition to contend with. So instead we’ll just tinker around the edges, try to address tackling (which, in the heat of the moment, will never work), hope that youngsters’ muscle memory (re. tackling) isn’t lost when they reach the adult game, ruin games with cards, while, at the same time, adding competitions to the calendar.

Money is still talking louder than welfare, and the only hope is that the class actions change this balance

Lost Ormond

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414449#Comment_119414449

What level kids rugby you on about? I dont see that coming in at adult level any time soon though. I dont see how your first and last paragraps add up. you cant talk about changing things to make things safer and then criticise head contact and how its dealt with calling it ridiculous.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414449#Comment_119414449

I may be older than most on here but when I played (not to any high level fwiw) head contact and high tackles were big "no-no's", (we used to call them clothesline tackles, iirc, which might give my age away). It wasn't part of the game I remember playing but seemed to creep in with professionalism and the pacific islander (or maybe rugby league?) aggressive type of tackling. It isn't part and parcel of the game, most of them are either bad tackle technique or cheap shots, imo.

Itxa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414449#Comment_119414449

Great suggestion re tackle height. It would remove a lot of the problems in the game. The only problem I see is the increasing likelihood of knees to head if the oncoming player is upright and the defender dives downwards to take him underneath the waist. Still it takes away a lot of the body weight from impact and uses the levers as the point of tripping up or stopping momentum.

I always liked the one leg tackle when a monster or fatty was rushing me. Grab one leg and you have the opportunity to wrap the arm around the other leg when his momentum takes him past you. Ankle tackles also very effective but you risk the stray boot or kick to head in that case.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119411144#Comment_119411144

Thanks for linking the article and recommending the podcast. Agree with your last paragraph, we can't pretend we're not endorsing awful practices when we cheer that guys like Sexton get cleared to play 1 week after a bad head knock.

eagle eye

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414584#Comment_119414584

13 and below.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414689#Comment_119414689

I remember those times well. And yes anything to the head was considered not part of the game.

Since the game went professional people have got bigger and faster and I believe this is what's making it more dangerous. I'm not disagreeing about similar tackles to rugby league etc. because nowadays coaches are studying all sports to try find an edge.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414723#Comment_119414723

The way see are teaching kids now, by direction of the IRFU, is cheek to cheek with the head on the side you initiate the tackle. That's tackler's cheek to the opponent's ass cheek to clarify.

Back when the game was amateur the leg tackle was far more commonplace than it is these days.

I don’t know that the tackling rules will change the game enough to solve the problem. Most concussions are accidental in one way or another - knees to the head etc. Siobhan Cattigan’s concussions weren’t high tackles.

The issue is as much the frequency of collision (as described by Bernard Jackman yesterday - 25 concussions in a season just through regular contact), week in week out with hardly any break between seasons for international players. Can only be addressed through drastically fewer games (cut in half at a minimum) and far far stricter concussion protocols.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414506#Comment_119414506

An NFL team has 17 games in its regular season and then up to 4 more in the playoffs for up to 21 total games per team per season. And its a lot more competitive, every game matters - even older/more at risk players like star quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady will play 90%+ of that game time, they're not getting entire games off or subbing mid-way regularly the way Sexton for example would for Leinster or Ireland.

So its not really an example of a much easier season - its mostly just a lot shorter in duration (September->February).

thebaz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414871#Comment_119414871

But the players get to rest , something professional rugby players dont in ther 11 month season - Every day its seams ther is a story about a new case on the effects of rugby - something has to give , the season in France and England will have to be shortened for sure , either they are just paying lip service, or else mounting court cases, will exceed the greed of more games . Rugby is a great game , but the season needs to be shortened and more done about collisions and high tackles to reduce injuries. Sometimes less is more.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414871#Comment_119414871

It’s still half the number of games for an English premiership player (capped at 32 I think, and I know that players have been given permission to break that) with a far far longer recovery

pickarooney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414871#Comment_119414871

Any time I've tried to watch American Football they seem to change the entire team every few minutes and some of the players never make tackles at all. There's like 45 players in the matchday squad for a 60 minute game. I imagine they do an awful lot of training but I don't see where the average player is amassing a lot of game time.

There's also dead rubbers near the end of the season and even incentives to lose games and get a better draft pick.

The NFL is no model to follow, the average career length in it is something like 3 and a half years. It's unbelievably attritional.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415266#Comment_119415266

the only aspect of that model that I was talking about (as have a number of pros recently) is number of games and length of season.

stephen_n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414867#Comment_119414867

I don’t know that the tackling rules will change the game enough to solve the problem. Most concussions are accidental in one way or another - knees to the head etc. Siobhan Cattigan’s concussions weren’t high tackles.

I think the actual evidence shows the exact opposite. That’s why the emphasis is on tackle height. That head on head contributes to most of the serious conclusive injuries.

The game will always have concussions but reducing the tackle height could massively improve it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415303#Comment_119415303

It's not about the number of games though, imo, in rugby, it's the size, speed and technique of the tacklers. At the highest level the game is unsafe whether you play 1 game or 40 games a season. That said, I agree with you, the season is too long.

eagle eye

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415266#Comment_119415266

And CTE is commonplace.

Definitely the high profile concussions will be addressed with tackling rules. But there is increasing evidence that it’s the week on week, season on season, minor concussive events, between which the brain cannot recover, are just as big a problem. If not bigger. That’s the piece that is being brushed under the rug in the money driven increases in number of games. That I am sure will come out in the class actions which are going to point to long term attrition rather than specific hits

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119414910#Comment_119414910

The English premiership players are flogged like horses though, thats been known for years. They're an extreme example to use - I compared to Irish players like Sexton because the discussion was on Irish rugby with Bernard Jackman's article.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415236#Comment_119415236

Theres a whole lot to unpack here, I'd suggest reading up on the basic rules of American football. But the base point relating to my post would be the starting QB will play 95-100% of offensive snaps, they're not being subbed off at all.

There aren't dead rubbers for any team in the top 2/3rds of the NFL because even end of season games matter for qualifying for the playoffs, getting a by-week in the playoffs, or getting homefield advantage, all of which teams care hugely about.

Burkie1203

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415266#Comment_119415266

The NFL career might only be 3 or 4 years but throw in a 4 year college career preceeded by how many years at underage level

The below is taken from the wikipedia about Mike webster, who was the player featured in the film concussion

.................

It has been speculated that Webster's ailments were due to wear and tear sustained over his playing career; some doctors estimated he had been in the equivalent of "25,000 automobile crashes" in over 25 years of playing football at the high school, college and professional levels.

...............

Former Former Former

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415266#Comment_119415266

Isn't that more to do with players just not making the grade, rather than retiring through injury.

pickarooney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415754#Comment_119415754

Does that not imply they play 0% of the defensive snaps and are off the pitch half the time, so thirty minutes of action per match?

And that's the QB who doesn't really do tackling.

1/3 of teams having nothing to play for is a large number of dead rubbers, not dissimilar to other sports.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119416314#Comment_119416314

Playing none of the defensive snaps isn't the same as "being subbed off every few minutes", its not tag rugby.

QB's are on the receiving end of massive tackles, half the players on the opposing team, plenty of whom have 20KG+ on the QB, are trying to hit them on every play of the ball. Have you ever watched a game of American football?

And 2/3rds of teams having not a single dead rubber game in the entire season is completely dissimilar to the URC, or rugby in general. Leinster are able to rest Sexton and the other top players for at least half of their league games because they're not competitive games.

If you want a direct comparison: Leinster have played 162 competitive games across the last six seasons, Sexton played in only 52. And he didn't play those 52 games in full, he was either subbing on or off for large parts of most of them. The Green Bay Packers have played 108 games in the past 6 seasons and Aaron Rodgers has played in 99. Tom Brady is even higher, hes played 109 of 113 games in the same time period. And neither of them was being subbed off for more than 5% of their play time.

stephen_n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119417213#Comment_119417213

Are you deliberately excluding international games or did you just forget about those ones?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415352#Comment_119415352

It's not just tackles though and those sort of collisions that are leading to concussions or those issues; it's just the repeated attritional nature of the game. You read about the training sessions; the infamous Jim Telfer scrum sessions on the Lions tour in '97 where the team were subjected to something like 60+ scrums in a single 40-odd minute session.

It's also been fairly comprehensively illustrated that players don't have to sustain a direct blow to their head to suffer concussion-like effects; that a huge collision anywhere on their body is still rattling their brain and causing concussions.

The reports of the tragic death of the schoolboy Ben Robinson in Antrim in 2013 fairly horrifically describe this phenomenon.

hold my beer

Isn't football having former player brain issues which are being linked with heading footballs. It's going to very very difficult to eradicate all risk from sport. However, the governing bodies need to be doing everything they can to mitigate the risks without ruining their sports, that's for sure.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119415754#Comment_119415754

You are right about the English and French being beaten up more than the Irish. But world rugby addressing demand on those players will have an impact on every country

There is no argument at this stage from pros or commentators that there is too much rugby. Too heavy a demand on players, especially in certain countries. I’ve no doubt that the class actions will reinforce that.

but if the maximum number of games were restricted by world rugby to say, 25, from 32, everything in rugby around the world would have to be reorganised. The money in the premiership and top 14 means that those competitions would be defended by their investors to their last breath, and so other competitions, whether European or international, will suffer. The whole game, the whole calendar, would have to be reorganised.

I don’t know how a reduced number of matches would play out, but the whole landscape would have to change.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119418444#Comment_119418444

TBH, that kind of change is inevitable.

The sport is facing a literal existential crisis. I'm honestly not certain it will exist in its current form 50 years from now.

I have a few family members who are in the medical profession or emergency medicine, and they just say it's stark to consistently see teenage boys in the emergency room in Vincent's or wherever with head trauma from playing a game.

I've absolutely loved rugby my entire life, and recently found out I'll be a father for the first time next year, and I have serious questions as to whether I want my son or daughter to play the game.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119417348#Comment_119417348

Sexton played an average of 7 international games a year over the last 6 years and a large number of those have been partial appearances like his 25minutes against Italy this year.

The international games are never going to be cut back on though, they make too much money and are the top tier of games for the players. Its provincial/club seasons that could/should have playtime trimmed.

Yeah_Right

@[Deleted User] Congratulations.

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119418743#Comment_119418743

Sexton averages at 65 mins for every Irish international game he plays

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119418743#Comment_119418743

That's exactly where the battle lines will be drawn between world rugby, and its unions, and the private interests with huge investments in domestic leagues and clubs. I don't see the necessary and substantial re-organisation of the world game (to accommodate the lower player demands) happening without ending up in the courts

errlloyd

Obviously, we should copy absolutely nothing about how the NFL is played on the field.

But the NFL is an absurdly commercially viable sport despite only playing a 5 month season and despite basically only playing games in what we'd consider non-prime time slots. If we could somehow get rugby down from a 30+ domestic season basically noone watches to a 17 game domestic season that everyone watches we'd be in a better place.

I think investment in Women's Rugby will help. If the Women's 6 nations see anything like the level of the growth that the LGFA has it could soon compete with the lesser URC games for eyes on TVs. The IRFU could suddenly be earning another decent chunk of revenue while resting one player base and focussing on another.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119418469#Comment_119418469

Congrats on the new arrival, life changing stuff but mostly great!

Re the rugby in 50 years time, rugby from 40 years ago (ie, the 1980's) is vastly different to rugby today, the game continually evolves. If World Rugby get it right, it'll evolve into a safer sport, with acceptable risk parameters. For me, the return to a strict no head contact rule is good and if it means more red cards, or even the farce we had with Italy being reduced to 13 players then so be it, coaches will adapt and players who can't adapt will be filtered out of the game.

(I know that a separate issue to the cumulative affect of years and years of tackling)

AbusesToilets

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119419295#Comment_119419295

The only way the game will improve in that regard is if there is a Euro league established. Unlikely sadly, mostly because of the French.

ersatz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119422674#Comment_119422674

Plus one on your good news @freshtodeath

Chatting w Kiwi pals and looking around online there is a lot of resistance to the full red card among all Blacks fans and in the game in NZ. I noticed Bryn Hall arguing that full red cards were the way to force coaches and players to lower tackle heights but then acknowledging that he was happy to contradict himself because he doesn't want cards that eliminate a player for the rest of the game. Literally holding 2 opposing views in his head at the same time. I don't know what the story is in SA or Australia but if the kiwis get their way 20 minute reds aren't going away.

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119426246#Comment_119426246

There is not a chance that those 20 minute Red cards will get implemented Globally and I suspect that the IRB will find a way to shut down Sanzar from deviating from the global rules for much longer.

The NZ/Australian issue about the Red Cards is all driven by the NRL in my view.

They are both fighting for Screen time and Ad revenue from the NRL and those fans don't like the idea of red cards for hits that are deemed perfectly legal in League impacting the "product" so the ARU and NZRU are both trying to thread some weird needle of knowing that they have to do something about Head contacts but also not wanting to alienate the fan base they are trying to attract.

molloyjh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119426820#Comment_119426820

What I don’t get is that league are having to deal with lawsuits for concussion stuff too and yet seem to be completely happy to allow head contacts to continue. They even celebrate them. It seems more than a little stupid to me to allow a thing that’s hurting you to continue happening.

Quin_Dub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119427182#Comment_119427182

It's definitely a weird one alright.. they really don't seem to be doing anything to even be "seen" to take action on the issue.

They really seem to embrace the hard man macho crap way too much.

Yeah_Right

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119426820#Comment_119426820

I agree. League always had better marketing than rugby in NZ and Australia. Growing up in NZ we all played rugby but also watched a lot of league. State of Origin and the Grand Final in the NRL were big events. And shows like the Footy Show were so much better and more entertaining than anything rugby could come up with.

sprucemoose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119427182#Comment_119427182

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119427210#Comment_119427210

im a massive fan of league and would love to see it take off to a much bigger extent in ireland, but for me there are a large amount of the fans (especially in aus) that have views that are...............interesting to say the least. there is a constant harkening back to the more physical game that was played in the 80s etc, and calls to 'bring back the biff' which go completely against the interests of player safety despite everything we now know about head injuries etc. it also forgets that the game as a spectacle was largely **** back then too

the views of alot of fans regarding the recent manly jersey controversy really drove it home that theyre not living in the 21st century