New rugby tackle laws misread

The gap between what World Rugby’s new tackle laws have been designed to achieve and how they are being judged is enormous.

We should not be counting the number or cards, nor their colour. We should only be counting the number of concussions.

I know World Rugby is. Under the auspices of chief medical officer Dr Martin Raftery World Rugby is collecting information on a weekly basis.

The governing body is therefore aware that the law of unintended consequences might scupper their goal of reducing the incidence of head injuries. But it is their goal nonetheless, and it is vital one.

All the other stuff - the proliferation of yellow and red cards, the supposed danger of the game becoming soft (it will never be that) and even the potential for the changes to benefit attacking rugby by encouraging the offload is secondary.

The laws will stand or fall of their ability to reduce the number of brains being damaged.

When they [World Rugby] consulted the likes of Eddie Jones and Paul O'Connell before they released the new laws they were told that intolerance of high tackles and a punitive approach was the way to go.

A second misconception is also clouding the debate.

Perhaps World Rugby has done a poor job of selling the information, but their research (and that of independent bodies such as Leinster rugby) show that the tackler is at greater risk of a concussion.

In the wake of the Ireland v All Blacks game in November, attention has almost exclusively focused on the ball carrier. This is understandable but it is only part of the equation.

Hence, the recent complaints about cards being shown to tacklers even though they barely brushed an opponent’s head do somewhat miss the point.

World Rugby is trying to drive a culture of getting players lower not just to spare the ball carrier but to protect the tackler.

When they consulted the likes of Eddie Jones and Paul O’Connell before they released the new laws they were told that intolerance of high tackles and a punitive approach was the way to go.

There is a caveat. Despite the good intentions of World Rugby in introducing these laws, they still could fail. We have to recognise that. It is probable they will not, but it is possible.

The reason is clear if you have watched anything of European rugby over the past month. The main issue is that there have been a number of incidents where the tackler has been concussed, or put in a unsafe position, as a result of a low tackle - this is the unintended consequence we addressed earlier.

Some of these were no doubt the unavoidable result of rugby being a brutal game played by large athletes.

But it does raise the concern that players have been endangering themselves by going low and putting their heads in unsafe positions in an attempt to avoid penalties and cards. The data that World Rugby is collecting will have the answer to that.

Their findings may even mean the laws are tinkered with again but there’s no turning back from the long-term goal: protecting the head as much as possible.

As for the question of what these new laws mean for New Zealand’s success, let’s apply a broad observation.

Typically, new laws benefit the countries that have the wit to absorb their lessons quickly.

New Zealand does not have exclusivity on rugby intelligence but more often than not in the past decade it has appeared to be one step ahead of the rest.

The attempt to get tackles lower does not endanger the All Blacks’ position on top of the world - and it will probably protect their heads in the process.