I don’t think rugby can accept it’s a concussion generating sport. We can’t just say, ‘that’s how it is’, it’s not tenable
Sports scientist Ross Tucker explains why red cards are the best way of making rugby safer
THE thing which really strikes you across the eight episodes of Six Nations: Full Contact is the sheer brutality of the modern game. Rugby has got the Netflix treatment and maybe it’s all the cinematic slow-motion footage set to dramatic backing music and sound effects, but it leaves you with the impression that last season’s championship was pure carnage.
This first offering from the streaming giant revels in all this gladiatorial confrontation. It is sure to pique the interest of many nonrugby followers who stumble upon on the show.
Physicality is rugby’s big selling point, but is also the sport’s biggest problem. Later this year, a class action, which has swelled to 300 former players, is taking World Rugby – the game’s governing body – to the UK High Court over the effects of brain injuries they suffered on the field.
The issue of concussion looms large over the game. Ross Tucker, a renowned sports scientist and research consultant with World Rugby, is one of the people trying to get out ahead of this incoming storm and make the game safer.
The current framework around high tackles has been in place since 2021. Effectively, it’s zero tolerance for dangerous tackles. Suffice to say, it has polarised coaches, players, pundits and fans.
Think back to Sam Cane’s red card in the World Cup final or the fiasco around Owen Farrell’s suspension (after initially being cleared) for a dangerous tackle last year.
Referees are feeling the heat more than ever. Rugby feels like it’s at a tipping point at the moment. How do you make a sport which features 30 powerful athletes smashing into each other for 80 minutes safe? Or at least, safer?
‘I think one of the major challenges for the sport is it’s a philosophical and cultural acceptance that we came from a time when a red card had a specific meaning about malice and intent,’ Tucker begins.
‘A red card was given for stamping or punching or gouging or elbowing or kicking or something. Really egregious red card offences were almost always deliberate acts of foul play.
‘The paradigm shift was, we’re going to sanction with red cards for a lot of what people called technical offences or, I really don’t like the word, but rugby actions, rugby incidents, rugby collisions.
‘That’s been difficult for a lot of people to accept and I understand why because they’re saying that the game is physical and it’s meant to be that way and the player hasn’t gone in there deliberately to hit a head but they’ve done it and they have to be punished with a red card. The team loses and the fans lose etc.
‘So, I get that. But accepting that has been part of the process. The meaning of a red card has changed.
‘And it had to change because that card was introduced as a way to drive that behaviour change because we recognised where the risk was the greatest. That has been confirmed a number of times.
‘Rugby league is doing the same thing.
It’s the same in the women’s game. In community rugby it’s the same. ‘When you tackle high, both players are at risk so you have to change that behaviour. ‘This goes back to 2016 and 2017, the advice that the experts gave us is that the best and most acceptable way of changing behaviour is to sanction the undesirable behaviour more harshly.
‘So that’s where the clampdown on harsh tackles came from.’ Tucker hasn’t seen the Netflix show yet. He’s a busy man. It’s in the queue, however.
We point to a flashpoint in the episode focusing on Ireland when hooker Rob Herring cops a sickening high tackle from giant French tighthead Uini Atonio – a violent collision which is only amplified by the multiple angles, replays and intense music.
In the current climate, everyone in Aviva Stadium that day thought a red card was imminent. When referee Wayne Barnes took a yellow out of his back pocket, there was shock around the ground.
Tucker, who played a big role in bedding down these tough sanctions into rugby law, has some empathy for match officials. This isn’t an easy gig.
‘It’s fair to say that it’s been difficult. If you put yourself in the referee’s shoes, it’s obviously going to be difficult because no one wants to give that red card.
‘That Wayne Barnes one was early in the game. It’s difficult for the ref. I get that and that’s where they’ve been challenges for everyone because the referee is now under more pressure than before.
‘The players are under pressure to have better technique than before. But all of these things are the price, maybe it’s a bit philosophical, for the sport to pay to try and get safer.
‘I don’t think rugby can accept that it’s a concussion-generating sport. We can’t just say, “that’s just how it is” because it’s not tenable.’
Trials by social media aren’t helping the process either.
Last weekend, there were two controversial red cards in a pair of Champions Cup games at the Sportsground and Thomond Park. One featured an accidental stamp on a head, the other featured a knee to the face. Both resulted in the offenders being sent off. Finlay Bealham was lucky not to get a stud in the eye, while Tom Ahern spent the night in hospital. There was little malice in what Josh Caulfield or Curtis Langdon did, but this is the current landscape. The line has to be drawn somewhere.
Unsurprisingly, the ‘game’s gone soft’ brigade were out in force. The other side are equally staunch in their stance about player safety.
There is almost a partisan divide on this subject these days. Again, it’s not helpful to the wider conversion.
‘Rugby finds itself as the rope in a tug of war because you have one side pulling hard on “the game’s gone soft, let the guys play, let’s just accept the risk” and then the other side of the the group is saying, “you’re not sanctioning it enough”,’ Tucker says. ‘So a yellow card is given and one side is saying it should have been red. Or a red is given and the other side says yellow at worst.
‘That’s the tension, right? That’s why it’s such a difficult, philosophical dilemma. Where do you stop that? Again, nobody is saying that any of those incidents are the outcome of a deliberate intent.
‘There was a knee to the head last weekend. There was a stamp and other high tackles.
‘I don’t think anyone genuinely believes that those players did that on purpose.
‘The question is if it’s reckless and if it’s reckless can players be held to some standards of guys for themselves and for their opponents.
‘I think that’s what rugby is trying to find and get that message across, to change behaviours and make sport safe like that.’
Something clearly has to change. Players are getting fitter, stronger and more powerful. The game is speeding up all the time. More ball in play time means more collisions, more tackles and more chances of suffering a brain injury.
Teams have never been better at keeping the ball for long periods and that brings its own dangers. There is a constant drive to speed everything up but it is inviting more problems down the line. The desire to bring rugby to the masses and make it box office may come at a great cost.
Is it sustainable in the long term when the sport is getting into lawsuit territory on a colossal scale?
‘Wasn’t it Warren Gatland who said that he was worried about the physicality a few years ago? He likened many rugby collisions to car accidents,’ Tucker notes.
‘I think there is a legal imperative to reduce the risk of brain injury.
There’s a business and commercial imperative. It’s a threat to the financial side.
‘But from my perspective, I’m a scientist and we work with doctors. There’s a human element to it and a player welfare side to it.
‘There’s almost a moral imperative to protect players’ brains better than it’s been done because, if you don’t do it, the consequences of these brain injuries and concussions… I mean we’ve seen what other sports have had to go through so, yeah, there’s lots of reasons to do it.
‘That’s why the argument about there being “rugby incidents” and “it’s just part of the game”, “you can’t avoid that if you play rugby” – that seems to me to be a slippery downhill path because what are you saying? Are you saying that you can’t play our sport without suffering these injuries? I don’t accept that.
He continues: ‘To be clear, I don’t think anyone is arguing for zero risk. No one wants to take the physicality out of the game.
‘It’s just about framing it as a kind
You can play an incredibly physical game without having concussions
of calibration exercise. You’re not trying to switch off concussions, you’re trying to dial down concussions. Of course there are going to be concussions and, of course, you can tackle and be physical without putting the head in some risk.
‘It just needs to be reduced as far as possible and that’s actually the fundamental tension in rugby and how far do we need to reduce it.
‘Some people are saying it’s fine as is, let the players accept the risk and get on with it but I think it can be reduced without changing the nature of the game.
Many of the games in the World Cup, some of the most physical games you saw, the Ireland and South Africa game, New Zealand and France, I think New Zealand and Ireland was similar... there wasn’t a single concussion in any of those games.
‘So you can play an incredibly physical game without concussions but the fact is that it can happen. It’s the search for reduction, not elimination, is the point I’m making.’
So, what is Tucker, with his player welfare hat on, hoping to see in the forthcoming Six Nations?
‘I would love very much not to see a single red card.
‘I would love very much to see fewer concussions than we’ve seen in the past four or five years. If we can see changed behaviour by tacklers and that’s part of the narrative and story that’s about to build.’
No doubt, there will be plenty of controversy, debate and discussion around this subject in the coming months. Tucker, however, is hopeful for the future.
‘It’s been a slow, uphill grind but there are some hints that we’re getting to the top and reaching some sort of turn and I hope that persists and it’s not some sort of false summit.’