Dane gets to grips with safety crisis in women’s game
KATHYRN DANE grew up a stone’s throw from Enniskillen rugby club and learnt to play the game alongside boys. From her own experience, the Ireland and Ulster scrum-half reckons that up to under-12, there might be no need to separate teams based on gender. And women’s rugby could benefit in the long-term.
‘We are seeing a lot more girls’ youth rugby but I would be an advocate of letting girls play with boys for as long as possible,’ Dane said.
‘I was a product of that system and I got an awful lot out of it. We don’t necessarily need to have an under8 girls team, we just need to be more inclusive and let that under-8 girl play with boys until they are under12. We are definitely good enough and it is a great place to build skill and get confident in your techniques.’
Dane’s voice should be listened to, not simply because she has gone from playing with boys to being an international, but also because she is literally a student of the game. The Fermanagh woman, among the sports scholars that Trinity College announced this week, is undertaking a PhD on safety and performance outcomes of tackling in women’s rugby. And some of her findings are stark.
Some female players had never made a tackle before their first game of rugby. And this was not at amateur or grassroots level. This occurred in international rugby. It’s little wonder that, as Dane revealed in a recent published paper, almost 70 percent of injuries in the women’s game stem from tackling.
There are also serious player welfare issues, given that athletes are asked to engage in a physical and high-impact sport without being properly schooled in the basic skills of the game. As Dane points out, a similar situation would not arise in the men’ game.
‘Over the course of the interviews, I think I was most surprised by the lack of preparation that women had leading into tackling and contact for rugby. I had a number of women in my interviews who had never tackled or made a tackle prior to their first game of rugby. And sometimes, this was at international level,’ Dane reveals.
‘Often, what happens is a woman is excelling in another sport, like soccer or Gaelic football and they are just rushed in to play rugby because they can do a job. And maybe they get stuck on the wing, where they don’t have to make that many tackles but you do still get faced with making the odd tackle or two. And there is an assumption that women know how to tackle, and how to execute this skill safely. I think that was the bit that really shocked me.
‘It is a big component of the tactical and psychological preparation, it is like any skill. If you put somebody on a soccer pitch and they have never controlled a ball before, it doesn’t lend itself to performance so why would we let that happen for tackling in rugby? It just seemed to be counter-intuitive to me.’
Even if part of the problem lies in many players coming late to women’s rugby – more than 80% of the people that Dane interviewed for her research started playing the game when they were an adult – she suggests that it wouldn’t hap
pen in the men’s game. ‘It shouldn’t be done and you wouldn’t get in the men’s game, because the systems and pathways are very much in place and even if a new person did join a men’s side for the first time, I am sure they would be put through a rigorous process of getting them proficient and confident with their tackle technique before putting them on the pitch.’
Even allowing for the remarkable growth of women’s sport over the past few years, it is still running to catch up in a man’s world. And much of the research is based around male athletes. So, Dane’s
PhD is an effort to fill that knowledge gap in one area, although there are plenty of others such as the ACL injury crisis in football or the lack of support for post-partum athletes across many sports.
‘I wanted to shed a light on what was the situation with tackle injuries in women’s rugby,’ Dane said, when asked what prompted this research topic. ‘We do have an idea about injury epidemiology, but my research shows we aren’t doing enough to engage athletes in the process.
‘Due to the nature of a contact sport like rugby, it is male-dominated and rewards the men’s teams a bit more. We need to celebrate women’s sport a lot more and give them the support they deserve.’
The Enniskillen native is conducting this research, which will hopefully make the women’s game safer, while she is recovering from a near-fatal brain haemorrhage she suffered during an Ireland training camp at the High Performance Centre in Abbotstown almost a year ago. She was rushed to Connolly Hospital where a previous undiagnosed AVM (arteriovenous malformation), an abnormal tangle of blood vessels connecting arteries and veins in the brain which affects just 1% of the population, was discovered.
‘It had nothing to do with rugby, it was something I was born with, an AVM. Some people have them and they don’t burst and bleed. But mine decided to do so that day,’ Dane says matter-of-factly. ‘I was very lucky to be in the High Performance gym, as it could have happened in the car, heading to training. It was just a freak thing, nothing to do with rugby.’
All the treatment has gone well for the 27-year-old and she has recently returned to some light running and gym work, with a tentative target of next year for a return to the rugby pitch, dependant on medical advice.
‘I’m doing really well. I’m over my treatment. I’m back in the gym and back running. We’re getting a second opinion on whether I can go back to play. They’re just making sure I can tick all the boxes in that regard and that I’m safe to make a return,’ she says.
‘I feel good. I feel like I can go back playing. I’m working closely with the IRFU to make sure I can be in the best place physically to get back on the pitch.
‘I’ve set my sights on getting back within the next year, so fingers crossed.’
One hopes that Dane can get back on the field in the coming months and that she will once again be able to play the sport she loves for an Ireland team that seem to have finally turned a corner.
And perhaps, her sport will also take on board what Dane has discovered in her research and make the game a little safer for any woman that wants to play it.
I wanted to shed a light on the situation with tackle injuries in women’s rugby