World Rugby chief plays down fears game is becoming too physical

Despite the mounting injury count to Welsh and Irish players, World Rugby says it is not alarmed by attrition rates in teams. Figures from this World Cup show there is a rise in the number of players that have had to be replaced.

The governing body for the sport also claimed yesterday that the number of concussions suffered by players is down on previous tournaments. There were no figures offered for this.

The recent high-profile injuries to Johnny Sexton, Peter O'Mahony and Paul O'Connell, on the back of Wales losing no fewer than six of their back line players since the competition began, has sparked concern in the sport.

Fullback Liam Williams was the last Welsh player to hobble out of the tournament, and Ireland lost possibly three players in Cardiff to compound the absence of Jared Payne to a fractured foot.

"Coming into this tournament, since 2002 we have not seen an increase in the elite game either in the number of injuries or the severity of those injuries," said World Rugby chief executive Brett Gosper. Gosper added that the number of players who have had to be replaced had gone up in this year's event compared to 2011.

“Actually in this tournament, we have a slightly higher injury replacement count – 21 or so versus 2011, where there was a total of 19,” said Gosper.

The four Irish players have not been included in those figures as they have not yet been replaced.

Analyse

“There was a total of 37 in 2007 so we are tracking very well against that. Then you’ve got to analyse the nature of those injuries to see if this is out of the normal or not. Our early indications are that this is not tracking particularly differently to any of our World Cup tournaments in the past.”

Gosper added that while there had been a number of injuries that looked serious, the evidence of the tournament, which has three weeks to run, is that there is not a problem.

“Although visually it is serious because of the last two games in particular, our monitoring is not showing this to be extraordinary in any particular way. We want to make sure it is totally evidence-based rather than emotionally based,” he said.

“When we look at concussion, which has been a huge area of priority for us as a sport, we are actually seeing a tracking of less than the average for international Test rugby. We think we are making some progress in these areas.”

The organisers gave the tier-two nations little cause for comfort with regard to the four-day turnaround for matches, which is generally accepted to be more disadvantageous to the weaker squads due to their comparative lack of depth.

Japan suffered particularly from that. The 2019 hosts beat South Africa in the biggest upset in the history of the competition but lost to Scotland just four days later in Kingsholm.

"It's a difficult problem fitting 48 matches into six weeks," said head of the Rugby World Cup, Alan Gilpin.

“This time around the balance of tier-one teams and tier-two teams, in terms of scheduling, has been better.”

Better in this instance means an improvement on terrible scheduling in previous World Cups.

“Obviously what’s highlighted is the short turnaround for some of the big games and what that means for the teams with fewer resources. We are absolutely going to review that for the next round of match scheduling for 2019.”

Complexity

Gosper was also asked about the draw. Wales, Australia and England ended up in the same Pool A with the draw conducted almost three years before the tournament took place. Rankings at the time ensured the group of death.

“We don’t know the answer to that because we have the complexity of the Olympics in 2012,” he explained. “If we go into the market we are up against the Olympics in ticketing. We have to work that through after the tournament.

“There’s a sense people would like that [draw] to happen close to the [2019] tournament. The forces would be that we’d like it to be closer to the tournament but we have to look at every imperative. You are in a market where they have the Olympics in 2020

“We are looking at when it would be best for them to have certainty of those fixtures and know for scheduling when they can sell tickets with real certainty.”