In the second episode of Full Contact, the Netflix series on last season’s Six Nations, there are two jarring scenes, juxtaposed, maybe, to make us think. In the first, the Italian flanker, Sebastian Negri, is leaving the field on a motorised cart, surrounded by medical personnel, his head cradled in a padded brace, heavily concussed from a collision.
In the following scene one of Italy’s coaches, Ben Barnes, is addressing a team meeting, needled by the lack of aggression his players had shown against France a few days earlier. Their next game is in Twickenham.
“Our mentality has to be everywhere,” Barnes says. “It’s carnage. I want to see some violence from you this week. They’re f**king getting it.”
“Violence,” he said, seeking a word to frame a mood.
The camera switches to Negri, sitting at the back of the room. Though the concussion had happened 12 months earlier, against England in Rome, the impact had lingered. The headaches and the nausea dissipated after a couple of weeks but his form and his confidence and his aggression had all been reduced. Without aggression, his form and his confidence were snookered.
The incident was a chilling snapshot of rugby’s queered relationship with the contact zone. Negri is a powerful ball-carrier and one of Italy’s prized assets at the gainline. The tackler was almost upright when he made the hit, contrary to every message about player welfare and best practice. The top of his head made contact with the bottom of Negri’s chin and it is clear from the replays that Negri blacked out on impact.
The tackler, though, had no idea what he had done, except that he had stopped one of Italy’s most powerful men in his tracks. Getting up off the ground he celebrated as if he had scored a try. Behind him, two of his team mates are clapping furiously and roaring.
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“It’s ferocious from England,” said the TV commentator.
The only player who immediately understood the gravity of the situation was Ellis Genge, one of England’s props. He beckoned to the sideline for attention and tried to intervene before the medics arrived.
“I started choking on my tongue,” said Negri. “He removed my mouthguard and turned me on my side. He saved my life.”
Negri’s long-term girlfriend, Greta Franza Durante, was watching from the stand, numb with horror. In the Netflix show there is a staged conversation between them outside a café in Treviso; there was nothing contrived about her feelings.
“It was traumatic,” she says across the table to Negri. “I was there alone and I thought you were – it’s terrible to say – but I thought you were dead.”
“I am 100 per cent worried when Seb plays matches,” Greta said in another interview. “The thing that gives me the most fear for my future with him is the fact that something could always happen, at any moment.”
That is on Negri’s mind too. “I still want to lead by my actions,” he said. “But I also want to get home to my girlfriend in one piece.”
That episode of the series revolves around Negri and Genge and dwells for a while on their fascinating back stories. Genge grew up in a working class area of Bristol, remote from rugby’s common roots. In his youth Genge had been arrested five times. Some of his relatives had done time in prison.
“Any rules I was given I wanted to break them, for whatever reason,” he said. “I just wanted to rebel against everything. Rugby has definitely prevented me from doing stuff I inevitably would have been involved in.”
Negri was born into privilege, the son of a big farmer in Zimbabwe; at home, they had a swimming pool and tennis courts; the children were sent to private schools. Everything changed, though, when President Mugabe came to power and white farmers were chased off the land. Negri and his family were evicted from their home at gunpoint.
“The way our parents re-grouped us as a family was pretty special. I look up to them massively. They got up off the floor and went again. It’s almost like they’re sitting on my shoulder saying, ‘Seb, you can do it again.’”
Their personal stories are told quickly. The thread going through the episode is the contact zone. If Full Contact is your introduction to rugby, the language will hit you between the eyes. Language is the author of the act, the mood, the attitude, the anger, the energy.
“When I get that ball I want to run as hard into that person in front of me as I possibly can,” says Negri. “To inflict damage…You got to have that mindset to find an edge.”
After his near-death experience on the field, that is the feeling he was desperately searching for again: to hit people with the ferocity that defined his game; that gave him an advantage. Without that, what purpose did he have on a rugby field?
“Rugby is primal,” says Genge. “Running into people, bone on bone.”
Damage. Inflict. Primal. Violence. Carnage. Ferocious.
“I’m ready to put my head down and smash whatever is in front of me,” says Negri before the England game.
Smash. You know the words. We all use them. What if you knew nothing about rugby? How do you think they sound?
The contact zone is where rugby games are decided: who dictates the breakdown; who controls the gainline; who wins the collisions. It is also where the spectacle is adrenalised. You can hear it in the roar of the crowd, in the voices of the commentators. In Full Contact, there is a stylised soundtrack for the hits.
There is no narrator for the series. The interviewers are off-camera and seldom heard. It is not a commentary on the game; it is a glossy magazine. Atmospheric. Attractive. Genge and Negri are not asked if the contact zone needs to be a safer space, somehow. They only refer to the stuff they must do. Smash.
There is no mention of the class action being taken by nearly 300 former rugby players who suffered brain injuries, and who will pay a heavy price for the rest of their lives.
But, accidentally, episode two paints the picture. The contact zone is the heart of the game and it is the disease in its blood. Watch it through that lens. And listen.
