How to fix rugby’s dangerous tackle problem

There has been much grumbling this season about the readiness of referees to dish out yellow and, sometimes, red cards for dangerous tackles. Well, there will be many more such cards because rugby’s authorities recognize that the game has become too dangerous and is, consequently, on the verge of being itself endangered.

News from France this week makes the point.  Nicolas Chauvin, a member of the Stade Francais youth team died after a heavy tackle  in a match against the Bordeaux-Begles youth side. His neck was broken and he died on the operating table after suffering a cardiac arrest and brain damage owing to a lack of oxygen. He is the second French youth team player to be killed this season. The first three months ago, was Louis Fajfrowski of the Aurillacois club.

Now of course all contact sports and some non-contact ones can be dangerous. The young Australian Test batsman Philip Hughes was killed by a blow on the head a couple of years ago, his protective helmet not well enough designed to save him. Jockeys and other horsemen die in falls. Racing drivers and motor-cyclists crash and are killed. Mountaineers have fatal accidents. Young footballers have also suffered cardiac arrests and died – though professional football is now almost a non-contact sport.

But rugby is peculiarly dangerous because contact is an essential part of the game, written into the laws. Rugby League is perhaps less dangerous than the Union game because its Laws provide for no contact after the tackle – though much of the tackling is dangerous in League too where indeed high tackles that would be punished in the Union game usually go unpenalised.

It should be said that authorities in the Union game are alert to dangers, and in some respects – not only the penalising of high tackles – have taken measures to protect players. There is, for instance, an awareness of the risk of a player suffering a concussion and the danger of after-effects that scarcely existed in the old amateur game.

Any player or follower will have stories of a concussed player remaining on the field, his condition unrecognized. Ian Robertson, the BBC’s just retired rugby correspondent recalls in his memoir his friend Gavin Hastings of Scotland and the Lions missing a penalty in front of the posts in the  1991 World Cup semi-final against England. “It was later revealed,” he writes, “that Gavin was concussed and did not have any clear idea of what he was doing or why.”

These days any suspicion of damage to the head and brain will have the player whisked off the field for a Head Injury Assessment, and not permitted to return till given the all clear. Equally importantly, in the professional game at least, he won’t be allowed to play again until the doctors have given him the all-clear; and this may take weeks.

Referees have responded diligently to the instruction that they should be quick to punish high tackles and dangerous competition when a player leaps to field a high kick. Yet there is one area of the game where too little attention is given to dangerous play; and this is what happens and what is permitted at what is called the tackle point, more exactly what happens after a tackle is made.

It should be said that this is the most difficult area of the game to referee, partly because, whatever the law as it stands, insists, it is all but unworkable, so much so that it is often remarked that a referee could reasonably award a penalty after almost every tackle. The danger comes because either the tackler or another played on his side, will bend over the tackled player in an attempt to wrest the ball from him. He is required to keep his feet on the ground and support his own body weight without putting his hands on the ground. In theory the tackled player must release the ball instantly, but instants tend to stretch somewhat elastically.

Meanwhile players coming to the tackle point will attempt to shift opponents away from it – this is called clearing out – and often the player being cleared out is off balance and therefore vulnerable. Moreover, because he is not upright it is common for the player attempting to clear out an opponent to make contact with his head. In theory again, players must remain on their feet and must approach the tackle point from , as the law has it, “behind the hindmost foot “ of teammates already at the tackle point engaged in either a ruck (if the ball is on the ground) or a maul (if it isn’t).

Well, this is all very complicated and so much is going on that it’s natural if referees allow all but the most heinous misdemeanours to go unpunished. As a spectator you may sometimes conclude that, as with the set scrum, referees are so eager to see the ball away and open play resume that they are willing to turn a blind eye to transgressions that aren’t positively dangerous. Added to which they really need to have peripheral vision or perhaps eyes in the back of their head as well as in the face.

A contest for possession is an integral part of the Union game, as it isn’t in Rugby League, and nobody would want to see that change. Yet, if the game isn’t going to become excessively dangerous, partly because of the greater size, weight and strength of today’s players, it seems likely that the authorities are going to have to give as much attention to what happens after a tackle as they are now according to the tackle itself. Otherwise the simple fact is that parents will become ever more reluctant to let their young play rugby; and for those of us who love the game this would be very sad.

Perhaps the Past can help. A long time ago there was a very simple Law which required that the ball must be played with the foot after a tackle. This had the merit – in theory at least – of requiring players approaching the tackle point  to stay on their feet. There was no point arching the body in an attempt to wrest the ball from the tackled player,  and, in doing so, inviting a more than vigorous, indeed dangerous, “clear out”.

The law change was made in either the late 1950s or early 1960s, to encourage more handling.  But those who removed the law requiring the ball to be played with the foot certainly didn’t envisage the modern game and would, I suspect, be horrified if they could have imagined what happens at the tackle point now.

Some ten or a dozen years ago I suggested to the then Scottish representative on the International Board that many of the current problems of the game would be removed if we reverted to the “play the ball with the foot after a tackle” law. Somewhat to my surprise he said they had considered it at a recent revision of the Laws, but had decided against it. Perhaps it should be given another trial.

One other law reversion might be considered – this time as another way of discouraging high tackles, or rather as a means of encouraging players to tackle low: make it again unlawful for the tackled player to pass from the ground. This used, as I recall, to be a penalty offence. If you tackle high, the tackled player almost certainly can’t pass once he is on the ground; if you tackle low, he can. So, if you want low tackling, don’t let the tackled player do this.

A contact sport like rugby can never be completely safe, but it can be safer than it is now, without detriment to the pleasure of players and spectators. The way to me it safer is to look at the laws and amend or scrap those which may tend to make the game more dangerous, while strictly applying those that may make it safer.