Loose Pass: Knee injury protocols, rumour season and the loss of another great

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with knee injury protocols, rumour season and the loss of another great…

Clean up the cleaners

If you need to understand how unbalanced the head contact protocols have become in the context of the game, you need only to compare the four-week ban handed out to Mako Vunipola for his tackle on Bryan Byrne against the complete lack of sanction passed down to Connacht’s Byron Ralston for his clearout on Jack O’Donoghue.

Byrne lives on. Indeed, on the day, he played on. Should he become one of the unfortunate players to suffer post-career head trauma injury, it will clearly be a horrible thing, but it will just as clearly not be the one-time contact with Vunipola’s shoulder that did it. But Vunipola will miss most of January because Byrne’s head crashed into his upper arm (imperfect technique it was, reckless it was certainly not).

O’Donoghue did not play on as a result of Ralston’s illegal and desperately reckless act. He may not play again this season and it was clearly the one-off act from Ralston that did it. Ralston, in contrast to Vunipola however, continues to strut his stuff in Galway.

There are two things here. Firstly, Vunipola’s contact simply was not red card-worthy. Analysing these things in minutiae is becoming boring and futile; it suffices to say that the dynamics of the situation made it close to impossible for him to take the contact in any other way. Once again a tackler is vilified in order to prove a PR-point, while the actual point that needs proving is now being bounced around lawyers’ offices and courtrooms in highly unpromising fashion.

Secondly, we’re losing sight of clean rucking once again. Ralston’s clearout was a prime example of a burgeoning trend of cleaners coming in not so much through the gate as through the private entrance. To see some of the angles ruckers take these days, days in which we are supposed to be hyper-vigilant about accuracy and presenting positive pictures to referees, is to wonder if we really understood basic geometry at school. At other times, the only way some cleaners could reasonably considered to be ‘on their feet’ as they drive through would be if said cleaners were fast-moving, muscle-bound millipedes.

Ralston’s cleanout was a prime example of both – if perhaps the former more than the latter – and perhaps the only surprise is that there have not been more injuries such as that suffered by the unfortunate O’Donoghue. The crocodile roll cleanout may be less en vogue than it used to be as a result of the inherent dangers, but when cleaners are being allowed to fly in off their feet from the side at knee height anyway, it hardly matters.

That incident stood out because the ruck in which it happened was all but over, making it a little more cynical. But when the ruck is active and when the O’Donoghue role is that of the jackler trying to prise the ball from the carrier’s grasp, you don’t just have knees at risk, you have heads too.

And it’s far more likely to be these sorts of head contacts, caused by reckless, inaccurate, high-speed acts at rucks, which are having the horrific later-life effects on players now being assessed in the court-rooms, than it is the tackles of Vunipola.

But no. Punish the tackler. Leave the cleaner be. Cleaners create possession, create tries, create bums on seats don’t you know. We don’t need to vilify them, far easier to vilify those nasty old defenders.

If we are serious about reducing risks in our sport, we need to get serious about analysing accuracy at rucks and to not be afraid about calling out inaccuracies there too.

The rumour mill effect

Is it a coincidence that as soccer’s transfer window opens, so rugby’s ridiculous rumour mill begins to go into overdrive as well?

Loose Pass thought so upon the first reading of the Owen Farrell to Paris report, but as the substance grows – indeed as the reports surrounding Courtney Lawes join the Farrell ones – thoughts of rugby mimicking soccer disappear and are replaced by…

🗣️ "The two parties discussed the Provençal project and a one or two year contract. The ball is now in the court of the player and those around him."

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Courtney Lawes the latest #GallagherPrem player linked to a French club. https://t.co/vwgYPPqJVL

— Planet Rugby (@PlanetRugby) January 8, 2024

Huge concern actually. The Premiership remains a league competitive far beyond its resources in Europe, yet it’s been three seasons since we had a Premiership European finalist and that team has been comprehensively dismantled by the financial shackles since, while the one before it is about to end its era.

The lure of international rugby has not proven irresistible any more even to top young talent and while the quality and competitiveness remain, the foundations of it all have a reputation for being crumbly and poorly-constructed compared to other scenes.

There may be substance to these rumours. There may not be so much. But either way, English – British, really – club rugby continues to look so shaky, that even insubstantial rumours carry credibility.

RIP JPR

As this edition of Loose Pass was about to meet its deadline, the news broke that JPR Williams had passed away.

Here was a pioneer of an exciting game alright, not only by dint of his redefining of the role of the full-back, but also as he was one of the first to regularly jump to catch high balls before launching one of those devastating counter-attacks from the catch.

He was just as much at home linking up a counter-attack as launching one too; his was a key role in linking up that try for Gareth Edwards in 1973 for example. And, of course, he could kick, as New Zealand found to their cost in 1971, and as South Africa also found three years later.

A truly unique talent in his time and a tremendous servant to the game he played into his fifties and helped administer after he had stopped playing.

READ MORE: Rugby mourns the passing of Wales and British & Irish Lions legend JPR Williams