Kathryn Dane: ‘I was surprised by the lack of preparation women had for rugby tackles’

There are women players who never made a tackle before their first game of rugby. Not just at grassroots club matches; this has happened at international level.

Being asked to use your body to physically stop an international athlete running at full pace without the requisite training could well be one of the most egregious abuses of player welfare in sport.

This staggering fact has come to light thanks to research conducted by Kathryn Dane, an Irish international herself, as part her of her ongoing PhD at Trinity College.

“I think I was most surprised by the lack of preparation that women had leading into tackling and contact for rugby,” explains Dane when asked to sum up what she has found so far. “I had a number of women in my interviews who had never tackled or made a tackle prior to their first game of rugby. And sometimes this was at international level.

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“Oftentimes what happens is a woman is excelling in another sport, like soccer or Gaelic football, and they are just rushed in to play rugby because they can do a job. And maybe they get stuck on the wing, where they don’t have to make that many tackles, but you do get faced with the odd tackle or two. And there is an assumption that women know how to tackle, and how to execute this skill safely.

“Within the cohort that I interviewed, I think it was 85 per cent were adults when they started playing rugby, so 18 and above, that was varsity or club rugby.”

Unsurprisingly, Dane has found that this blatant lack of regard for player safety is far less prevalent in men’s rugby.

“It just shouldn’t be done and you don’t get it in the men’s game,” she says. “If you put somebody on a soccer pitch and they have never controlled a ball before, it doesn’t lend itself to performance, so why would we let that happen for tackling in rugby?”

Dane, who was among Trinity’s latest batch of announced sports scholars, is conducting her PhD research on safety and performance outcomes of tackling in women’s rugby. She aims to fill a knowledge gap since most tackling coaching and safety strategies have been informed by research and experiences in the vastly different context that is the men’s game.

“We have basically assessed coaches’ knowledge, attitudes and practices in regard to tackle training – what do they do in practice?” explains Dane. “We wanted to compare that to what the players in our interviews had told us about their tackle training and, hopefully, come up with some sort of consensus in how we approach tackle training in women’s rugby to make it safer.

“They [coaches] also talked about a more nuanced education around the women’s game. A lot of the coach education out there at the moment, they are brilliant, really good, but they don’t touch on the extra nuance that happens in women’s rugby. Like [a] post-partum rugby player, what do we do with her if she wants to go back after having a baby?”

The Fermanagh native is carrying out her research while recovering from a near-fatal medical incident last year. While in the gym as part of an Ireland training camp, she was rushed to hospital with a brain haemorrhage.

[ Dane looking at life in a different light as she continues down recovery road ]

Dane was subsequently diagnosed with an arteriovenous malfunction (AVM), a tangle of blood vessels connecting arteries and veins in the brain. “Some people are born with them and they don’t burst and bleed,” explains Dane. “But mine decided to do so that day, but I was very lucky to be in a high-performance gym as it could have happened in the car heading to training. So it was a freak thing, nothing to do with rugby.”

As for her own career, Dane says she is back running and in the gym while waiting on a second opinion on the viability of returning to rugby. “They’re just making sure I can tick all the boxes in that regard and that I’m safe to make a return.

“I feel good. I feel like I can go back playing. I’m working closely with the IRFU to make sure I can be in the best place physically to get back on the pitch. I’ve set my sights on getting back within the next year, so fingers crossed.”

The next 12 months will also see Dane conclude her PhD research. On and off the pitch, 2024 promises to be a seismic one both for Dane personally and the sport she seeks to improve.