Player welfare the prime motivator behind World Rugby’s tackle height trials

Is rugby going soft? How are we protecting our professional players? Is it safe to play for children? What is World Rugby doing about all of this? It’s a series of questions anyone who loves our sport has become familiar with in recent years.

Recently, Matt Williams wrote in these pages that World Rugby needed to take a lead on the various trials of a lower tackle height in the community game currently being implemented around the world. Well, I’m sure Matt will be delighted to hear that is exactly what we have been doing over a number of years.

Trials of a lower tackle height already underway in Ireland, New Zealand, France, Australia, England, Argentina, South Africa, Scotland, Wales or anywhere else haven’t come about by chance. These research-driven trials are taking place because the science tells us that we need to do everything we can to reduce head impacts. I’m proud that it is World Rugby leading that change, not just in rugby, but in world sport. We push for change because we never stand still when it comes to player welfare at all levels of our game.

Rugby, at its very heart is a physical contact sport, nobody is trying to take that away. But as our understanding of science and medicine continues to evolve, it is incumbent on us as its ultimate custodians to ensure that the laws of the game protect all players.

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The science tells us to reduce head impacts as far as possible. It also tells us that high, upright tackles with heads – of tackler and ball-carrier – in the same airspace present the greatest risk of injuries like concussion.

[ Matt Williams: New tackle line could radically change how rugby is played ]

That is why, in 2022, we recommended to national unions around the world that they implement trials to lower the tackle height in community rugby to below the sternum. The following year, the World Rugby council – made up of representatives from member nations – approved this recommendation, with England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Italy and South Africa and many others joining the trials already taking place in New Zealand and France. In France, those trials had led to a 64 per cent reduction in head-on-head contact, and a 14 per cent increase in participation from pre-Covid levels.

World Rugby won’t be imposing solutions to what is the most important issue in the game without studying, in great depth, the effects of these various tackle height trials around the world, to understand what works, and what doesn’t. These are, after all, trials. We’re also investigating the impact of secondary law trials for double tackles, dipping into contact and how to referee what goes on close to the tryline when the ball carrier’s body position naturally becomes lower – all of which Matt rightly cited in his column. I can promise our analysis will be robust, providing an evidence-based direction for the game.

When the trials come to an end World Rugby knows that whatever decision we take must bring players, coaches, parents, referees and fans with us. There is no game without them. Our reasons behind those decisions have to be clear and evidence based. That evidence has to be painstakingly gathered and analysed. That is why the tackle height trials are moving at their current pace, no faster and no slower. Yes, we need to reduce head impacts in our sport, but we also need to get this right within the nature of playing rugby and we don’t take that responsibility lightly.

Any of us who stand on a sideline at our local club knows community level rugby is the same sport, but played completely differently to the action we’re all set to enjoy over the next couple months in the Six Nations.

But that doesn’t mean we’re not making changes at the top of the game too. Elite rugby is one of the most innovative spaces in player welfare. This will be seen over the next few weeks when rugby is the first sport to mandate the use of new smart mouthguards to help us understand not only if a player might need a head injury assessment (HIA) in any given game but also to understand the cause and risk factors for head impacts in the professional game. Will a lower tackle height end up in the elite game? I don’t know – it would need World Rugby’s members, the unions, and the elite professional competitions to request such a trial.

We’re also in talks with various unions about our Brain Health Service for retired elite players to monitor and support good brain health with pilots set to launch this year. Laws which today seem an integral part of the game such as the 50:22, were brought in 18 months ago to create more space, aiming to reduce the number of collisions and thereby improving player welfare. We review all laws adjustments through the prism of welfare and wellbeing.

Player welfare – whether it’s leveraging the latest technology and science or evolving the educational resources on tackle technique that we deploy across the game at all levels – is rugby’s number one priority. World Rugby exists to make the game better for everyone. That’s not a simple soundbite; it is a mission which motivates me every day in my job as chief medical officer for the sport. It also drives the decisions World Rugby’s board and senior leadership make, and it inspires an entire team of people around the world, working day and night, seven days a week to ensure that we can all enjoy our sport in the knowledge that every game, at every level is as safe as it can be.

Professor Éanna Falvey is Chief Medical Officer at World Rugby and a former Munster, Ireland and British and Irish Lions team doctor

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