Loose Pass: Five dead is too many

Adam Kyriacou
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This week we will mostly be talking about the future…

“From this moment on, we know,” said an editorial in L’Equipe on Sunday. “Nobody can pretend there is any doubt any more. Rugby kills.”

After the death of an Irish schoolchild in 2011, rugby was supposed to become safer. Ben Robinson was 14 at the time; video evidence shown at the inquest into his death showed him being assisted to his feet twice after some heavy collisions, one of which clearly knocked him cold. It then showed him receiving concussion tests, showed him being allowed to play on. Later in the game, Ben received another hit to the head and never regained consciousness. He was Ireland’s first recorded victim of second-impact syndrome, a condition where a previous bruise in the brain is exacerbated by another impact, causing the brain to swell.

Since then, we have been told many times, rugby has become safer. The word is out to coaches and referees at all levels to remove players at the slightest sign of concussion. There are independent doctors at big games to assess players and remove the responsibility from coaches and referees – no bad thing in games where livelihoods can be on the line and players can be irresponsibly stubborn about staying on. Take the decisions out of the hands of the agents with their own agendas.

Tackle heights are being lowered, collisions monitored, ruck clean-outs inspected with hypercritical eyes by referees and TMOs, with draconian punishments supposed to be meted out to transgressors (and sadly, those are far too inconsistently applied). But the mounting evidence shows that it simply isn’t working. Technical change can come all you like, but gym regimes, ‘improved’ coaching of winning levels of aggression, commercial demands and rule changes are all causing collisions to become harder and more frequent.

There have been at least five deaths in rugby this year. Three have come in France – the trigger for L’Equipe’s editorial – one in Canada and one in South Africa. All were caused by collisions. And it’s not just to the head any more. Louis Fajrowski, a 21-year-old Aurillac centre, was evidently killed because a collision with his chest caused a cardiac arrest. Kyle Barnes, of Goodwood in South Africa, was killed by a blow to the neck.

“A rough game has become a violent game,” continued the editorial.

“Rugby kills because it believed that preparation protected everything, that players’ bodies could take more tackles, harder, higher tackles, often made by two defenders simultaneously. Rugby kills because we just did not want to see that it could kill.” Now, surely, we can. There’s no way to prepare a brain or a heart for the forces rugby now directs.

But where do we go? Do we have to follow the NFL path, where ex-players are committing suicide in numbers because of debilitating head injuries before someone does anything? Will we have to go to court to have a revolutionising look at player welfare? Is there a Doctor Bennet Omalu character who might help us over the threshold, fighting against his being dumbed down by administrators?

Worryingly, there might even be that. French neurosurgeon Dr. Jean Chazal claims he was offloaded from the Ligue National du Rugby’s medical advisory panel last year, and told to keep his counsel about the increasing risks of traumatic injury in rugby.

“They told me I have to be quiet,” he said to French rugby magazine Midi-Olympique.

“I speak too much but I speak the truth… rugby is not suitable for 15-year-olds. It presents too many dangers.”

Chazal is another who advocates rugby being split into weight categories, a message this column has advocated many times. It might not reduce things at the top end initially, but even at U20 levels there are too many weight disparities in many games for safety to be even remotely first and foremost. As another club doctor memorably pointed out when Sam Warburton retired: “If you’ve got a game where Michalak is set up to tackle Nadolo, you’ve got a health problem.”

Five young men have died this year playing rugby. Three of them teenagers, another barely out of his teens. Whatever has been done to combat the dangers of the sport in recent years is simply not working. And a quote by World Rugby CEO Brett Gosper in the Guardian this week shows perhaps that this is not yet making enough of an impression at the top of the game.

“There are risks of getting hit in a sport like rugby, but it socialises, it teaches life lessons, it develops the character of the players. The benefits are well beyond the risks taken,” he said.

No they aren’t Brett. They were, but they aren’t any more. Five dead is too many. Lots of sports/hobbies/free-time activities teach, develop and benefit. Even current players are reluctant to encourage their sons to take it up. I wouldn’t encourage mine to either. Not at the moment. Not when five people have died playing it in the last few months. Touch rugby has become, in the shadows of full rugby, a remarkably athletic and skillful, spectator-friendly sport. Inclusive too. Rugby is becoming ever less so – lest we forget, one of England’s most talented players headed to the NFL a month ago, reflecting he was never given the stage he ought probably to have been given because of his diminutive size.

The opportunity exists for World Rugby, in a World Cup year, to do something radical and good. The additional opportunity exists for World Rugby to show, by doing this, that it is streets ahead of the NFL in this regard and will not need to come to end up making a dirty out-of-court financial settlement to its stakeholders.

Weight grade – or weight-band might be better to stop courageous lightweights getting ahead of themselves – rugby at youth team levels would be a start, and yes, even a moratorium on tackling at certain lower weight/age grades should be considered. At the very least.

Anybody involved in administration, coaching, officiating and playing of rugby cannot ignore what is happening any more. Injury statistics are piling up. Players are retiring younger.

And people are dying.

The game is fast reaching perhaps the most crucial moment in its history. Where are we going now?

by Lawrence Nolan

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