HEAD IN THE GAME
IN NOVEMBER LAST YEAR THE ALL BLACKS AND IRELAND PLAYED A THRILLING BUT BRUTAL TEST. NOT EVERYONE LOVED IT, THOUGH, AND IT BECAME A LANDMARK FIXTURE FOR FURTHER CHANGE ABOUT THE SANCTITY OF THE HEAD. GREGOR PAUL WITH THE STORY.
It was one of the most compelling games of rugby I’ve ever seen. There was some of the most skill I’ve seen played from Irish players that hit the absolute top level of quality.’ KEITH WOOD
It’s funny, Ireland beat the All Blacks for the first time in 111 years last year, but it was the test two weeks later in Dublin that may prove to be the greater landmark.
The return game in Ireland was ferocious. About the most physical ever played. The commitment from both teams was total and the impacts were enormous.
Throughout the 80 minutes there were heavy crunch points and if ever there was an advert for the carnal nature of the game, this was it. This was modern rugby at its best: highly conditioned athletes testing their resilience on every front.
The tone was set early when Ireland midfielder Rob Henshaw twisted unexpectedly and fell into an advancing Sam Cane. It was a tough tackle to watch – Henshaw’s head smashing into Cane’s, the former having collected the latter’s shoulder en route. Cane was upright because he had not had time to adjust.
Henshaw was knocked out and the crowd was hostile. They saw it as foul play. The All Blacks saw it as an accidental clash of heads.
With about 20 minutes to go, Malakai Fekitoa was yellow carded when he caught an escaping Simon Zebo high around the neck. It was a clumsy challenge and the Irishman was lucky not to have been injured in the process. Again the crowd howled with derision, unhappy it was only yellow when they were looking for red.
The All Blacks weathered the storm when they were down to 14 men with some of the best scrambling defence of the year. It was, in actual fact, one of their best 80-minute defensive performances of the year.
They barely missed a tackle and hit Irish attackers hard and in numbers. They threw themselves into contact and there was just a touch of frenzy about the way they defended their line. That all out assault without the ball allowed them to win 21-9 and while the game was played
with incredible intensity and had a few testy moments, both sets of players embraced at the end.
There was no niggle during the test. There were no flare ups, no sense that one team thought the other was playing outside the law.
There was only mutual respect come the final whistle and both teams left with the feeling they were building one of the best rivalries in test football.
Former Ireland captain Keith Wood told the Irish Independent: “It was one of the most compelling games of rugby I’ve ever seen. There was some of the most skill I’ve seen played from Irish players that hit the absolute top level of quality.”
But there were plenty of others who felt differently. Not everyone believed they had witnessed an epic test that showcased the muscularity of the game. That much became clear when All Blacks coach Steve Hansen was interviewed by Irish TV on the field after the test.
He was asked about the two respective incidents involving Cane and Fekitoa. “This is a moving game and the first one he got penalised, it was a head clash, and there were no arms involved at all.
“The one on the far side [Fekitoa on Zebo] was obviously a little high and was across the shoulder. I don’t think there was any malice in it. Rugby is a shifting game.
“When you’ve got ball carriers that move as well as the Irish do, they’re going to change direction. People are going to sometimes make mistakes and sometimes people fall into tackles, too.”
It was obvious, though, that the Irish presenter didn’t feel she had been given the answer she was hoping for, so she pressed Hansen three more times with the same question. On the fourth, he snapped: “I’m not sure where you’re going with this,” he said. “Do you want me to tell you that we’re a dirty side or something? Is that what you’re saying? I’ve talked about it. Do you want to talk about something else now?”
It didn’t end there. The All Blacks left for Paris the next day, but the Irish management were obviously still simmering about the way the All Blacks played.
They felt that the edge had come in more than just two tackles. Ireland’s manager Mick Kearney effectively accused the All Blacks of being relentlessly filthy. His biggest gripe was that he said the All Blacks had been reckless with Irish heads – constantly tackling and cleaning out too high.
“What I would say is the citing officer picked out 12 incidents during the game... 11 of them referred to New Zealand. The one that referred to us was a clean out of Sam Cane at a ruck and we were cleared of any foul play in that incident,” Kearney said.
“It is disappointing to be honest. There were a number of tackles and bangs around the head. We received the edict from World Rugby in the last week or 10 days and Joe [Schmidt] would have sat the squad down, showed them the various footage – including examples of tackles around the head and neck area.
“World Rugby had said, if these incidents occur then you are liable to a red card possibly. So that obviously didn’t happen at the weekend. There was the yellow card for the high tackle on Simon Zebo and they are looking at the other incident involving Sam Cane and Robbie Henshaw.”
Cane was cleared of any wrong doing at a judicial hearing while Fekitoa was handed a one-week suspension for his high tackle. Those judicial findings may have been the end of the matter as far as the All Blacks were concerned, but World Rugby had different ideas.
The laws of the game clearly state that the necks and heads of players are sacrosanct. When it comes to foul play, the game is cleaner now than ever before but referees must constantly be alert to head-high hits.’ ANTHONY BUCHANAN
The edict to which Kearney was referring had been delivered ahead of the November internationals. World Rugby made a bold statement that it had asked referees to adopt a zero tolerance policy around high tackles.
There would be no leniency. ‘No exceptions made’ was the warning. If a player hit the ball carrier around the shoulders and then slipped up, that would be too bad: that would be considered a high tackle and most likely a yellow card.
If the referee believed the tackle was high and had intent, then it would be red. This was the way things were going to be. “Our priority is player welfare,” said World Rugby’s match officials selection committee chairman Anthony Buchanan. “The laws of the game clearly state that the necks and heads of players are sacrosanct. When it comes to foul play, the game is cleaner now than ever before but referees must constantly be alert to head-high hits.
“By taking this strong approach, we are saying to players that tackling an opponent above the shoulder line will not go unpunished.”
But in typical fashion, most teams essentially ignored the warning when they played in November. And because they ignored it, referees were reluctant to be as forceful as they had been asked.
It felt like they would be reading the mood of the game wrongly if they started brandishing cards for tackles that they had been letting go unpunished for years.
That laissez-faire approach certainly appeared to be the one adopted by match referee in Dublin, Jaco Peyper. His lack of involvement allowed the game to flow, but in reviewing the test a day later, Hansen was willing to say that there had been a significant amount of play from both teams that could have been punished under the new edict. “That’s what you expect when you get two good sides playing each other. There was plenty of things on both sides,” he said.
“There was neck rolls and all sorts of things going on that were missed and that we could sit and complain about, but when you get a physical test match you get a physical test match and that’s what it was.
“No quarter asked and no quarter given. It’s a tough game to ref. They’re human and they’re going to make mistakes. You just hope they make them consistently.”
What the test in Dublin and the subsequent reactions to it did, was create a line in the sand moment for World Rugby. They had made their feelings public ahead of the international window about what they expected to see.
They said they were determined to uphold the welfare of the players and make a powerful statement about the sanctity of the head. The head had to be off limits and referees had a huge role to play in making that clear.
If they were serious about that, then they would have to reiterate the point and make sure that referees, players and coaches all understood that there really would be zero tolerance towards high tackling.
The game in Dublin was going to be the test that forced World Rugby to prove its leadership. They weren’t going to back down. What they saw in Dublin made them even more determined to get their way and change attitudes and cultures around high tackling
World Rugby’s desire to eradicate high tackling was driven by empirical evidence. Player welfare has been their lead priority for several years and a major strand of that has been the move to create a uniform concussion testing system.
In just five years, rugby has taken massive strides in regard to improving its detection procedures and attitudes towards concussion. Head injuries were identified as the biggest risk facing the game and without any delay or push back, the world game has been commendably proactive in ensuring it’s not accused of reckless abandon when it comes to players’ brains
It is now an accepted part of the game everywhere that any player who appears to have taken a knock to the head will be sent to the medics for testing and, just as importantly, the testing is consistent and genuine in the sense that no one – be it players or coaches – tries to con the system.
This system has been adopted, because
When it comes to protecting the head and neck of players, everyone is rightly very cautious now. The culture around concussion has completely changed and it’s no longer acceptable for players to continue in a game if they’re even suspected of having a concussion.’
there is universal evidence that there are significant health dangers if an individual plays with a concussion. It would be reckless to have ignored the science.
World Rugby has also tried to create its own science by analysing injury trends in the game. With players becoming increasingly bigger, stronger and faster and games reflecting that improved athletic ability, World Rugby set about trying to understand how and where players are being injured.
A major research project between 2013-2014 saw more than 1300 elite games analysed to determine the nature of injuries being typically inflicted at that level.
That research showed that the tackle is the most likely collision point in the game to induce a head injury. Almost 76 per cent of head injuries occur in the tackle. Of those, it is 74 per cent likely that it will be the tackler who suffers the head injury. If the tackler is high and upright, then that increases the chances of a brain injury by 40 per cent.
So just as it would be reckless to ignore the science around the dangers of playing while concussed, so too would it have been reckless for World Rugby to have ignored the findings of their own research about the dangers of tackling high.
The All Blacks test against Ireland couldn’t be ignored. World Rugby had to show commitment to its own science and beliefs and in mid-December it reiterated the same points that were made before the November tests and also revealed an amendment to the law.
It introduced two new categories of tackling. The first was called a reckless tackle, which would be deemed to have been made if a tackler knew or should have known there was a risk of hitting the tackled player’s head. This would include neck rolls and also be applicable if the tackler started lower, but rode up.
The sanction for a reckless tackle was a yellow or red card depending on the severity.
The second was termed accidental tackle – catering for those incidents when a tackler makes contact with the head but really had no intention of doing so. The sanction for this was set at a penalty.
There could be no leniency. The edict was clear – all high tackles were going to be punished. The head had to be protected and a combination of tougher sanctions and education were going to be the best way to reduce the number of high tackles.
Ireland prop Tadhg Furlong spoke for all players when he said: “When it comes to protecting the head and neck of players, everyone is rightly very cautious now.
“The culture around concussion has completely changed and it’s no longer acceptable for players to continue in a game if they’re even suspected of having a concussion. When it comes to dealing effectively with concussion in sport, rugby is at the forefront. The International Rugby Players’ Association [IRPA] supports any measure that protects our welfare and we are in favour of this initiative, which we believe will help further to reduce head and neck injuries at all levels of the game.
“Rugby is a physical sport and there will always be a level of injury risk associated with it but the sport is doing as much as it can to make it as safe as possible.”
It can look bad – when the arm comes across, hits the chest, or maybe the ball and slips up and hits someone’s chin. That is the kind of thing we have got to be strong at and get that right. That’s the thing with officiating – all we ask for is consistency and that is the feedback we have given and we have had referees at our training to help us.’ AL ROGERS
It was inevitable, despite the science, the logic and player support, that there would be some fan resistance to the new edict. It was an easy cheap shot to say that the new rulings were softening the game – removing something essential from it.
But while those claims were understandable, they had to be ignored. The truth is that over the years the height of tackling was allowed to climb to dangerously high levels without sanction.
It was one of those things that became accepted through occurrence, like poor use of language, if enough people do it for long enough, it becomes accepted practice.
Worse, though, high tackling had become glorified and relished in the Southern Hemisphere. The game was faster, more dynamic and that seemed to be licence for tacklers to crash in at the chest and sometimes bounce up around the head.
These sorts of hits won the crowd and TV producers. They would be celebrated and replayed – promoted as the sort of physicality that defined Southern Hemisphere rugby as better.
Remember the late Jerry Collins’ tackle on Colin Charvis in 2003? Held up as a stunning example of how to bury the ball carrier, it would have been deemed a reckless tackle under the current laws and instead of being revered around the world for that hit, Collins would have been red carded.
Whether fans in the Southern Hemisphere want to accept this or not, the truth is that high tackling had become the scourge of Super Rugby. There was too much of it in the last five years and not enough was being done to protect the ball carriers.
It didn’t really matter, though, what fans thought about the new edict, it was going to be enforced in this year’s competition. Players and coaches accepted that in December, and spent their preseason refining their defensive techniques to ensure they were going to be code compliant by late February.
“The biggest thing for us is working on what we call the wrap – when we use the arms because there is a tendency that, with momentum, they can slip up,” Blues assistant coach Al Rogers said ahead of the first game.
“We have spent quite a bit of time making sure that when we wrap, we wrap, so the arms don’t slip because that is where things can happen.
“I think the law itself has been there and obviously there is just more emphasis on it now but as long as there is no intent and we get that part right, we should be okay.
“It can look bad – when the arm comes across, hits the chest, or maybe the ball and slips up and hits someone’s chin. That is the kind of thing we have got to be strong at and get that right. That’s the thing with officiating – all we ask for is consistency and that is the feedback we have given and we have had referees at our training to help us.”
The subtext was that the players and coaching staff didn’t dispute the reasoning behind the law change. They accepted that the responsibility to play within the laws was theirs and there was no reason to believe the game was being adversely altered or wrongly softened by the edict.
The onus had been put on coaching and playing staff to get tackling techniques right: to be precise and accurate in contact to avoid referees having to make decisions.
That attitude was tested in round two when the Blues played the Chiefs. A frenetic derby was evenly balanced when Steven Luatua thrust out an arm and clobbered Tim Nanai-Williams around the throat on the cusp of half-time. It was a reckless tackle and to compound matters, Nanai-Williams didn’t have the ball.
Once the incident had been reviewed on the big screen, Luatua knew he was going to be shown the red card. Which he was and there were no complaints from him or coach Tana Umaga.
A year ago it would have been yellow and the Blues would have stayed in the contest. Instead, this time, it was red and they were well beaten as a result of only having 14 men for 40 minutes.
“We all knew someone was going to go early, it was only a matter of time,” Umaga said after the game.
“We were warned, the players were warned. We’d done a lot of work on it, and we just have to live with it. It’s not the discipline you’re looking for. We don’t want to be doing that kind of stuff. This is the outcome that happens.
“It sends a message. You run the risk, you’re ill-disciplined, then they’re not going to tolerate it; and we’ve got to look if you can’t adjust your tackling style or discipline is it going to be good for the team?
“We have to ask ourselves those questions. All we want is 15 people on the field doing the best for the team. We can’t question Steven’s want to do well for this team, it’s just a technical thing he needs to work on.”
And there it was – a definitive statement following a red card that showed how different the rugby world had become in the months since the test in Dublin.