Is rugby too dangerous?
For the first time in 50 years of playing and reporting on rugby, I have reservations about encouraging children to take up the sport.
For many years, I would shrug after a catastrophic injury such as afflicted the likes of former England and Leicester prop Matt Hampson; sympathise, of course, but conclude that the good bits in rugby outweigh the bad by a factor of 99 per cent. That position, some might call it naive, is now more difficult to maintain.
(Saturday at Kingsholm, On Friday NZ time) there minute’s was silence a for Stade 19-year-old Francais forward Chauvin, Nicolas who died last week after a cardiac arrest brought on by the trauma of breaking his neck in a match a few days earlier. On Sunday, we stood again as supporters had done at grounds all round Europe across the weekend. But then the referee’s whistle would blow and it was back to the norm – huge blokes crashing into each other, monstrous hits, bold, fearless play.
Except that something no longer sits right, a twinge of conscience, perhaps, a stab of guilt at being so unquestioning. It would be easy to move on again, to pretend that all is right with rugby’s little world.
But there has at least to be introspection and scrutiny if there are not to be more Chauvins. One fatality is terrible enough. But young Nicolas was the third in the French game in the past 12 months.
The minute silences have to be more than token gestures. The condolences expressed have to be more than fleeting platitudes. The sport has to work out if it has become too dangerous, too big, too brutal for its own good.
Mercifully, there does appear to be recognition that enough is enough. On Thursday, three senior figures in French rugby – Bernard Laporte, Serge Simon and Paul Goze – will meet with World Rugby grandees Bill Beaumont and Brett Gosper to appraise the situation.
There are no easy answers, no trite recommendations. Rugby’s critics castigate it at any opportunity. Ignore clamour and deal with sensitivities. This is about reflecting on what the game has become and working out if enough is being done to ensure that it is as safe as it is possible to be within those 80 minutes. There has to be serious discussion, no knee-jerk responses and certainly no heads being buried in the sand. The sport, to be fair, has reacted before to safety issues. It has at least started to focus properly on concussion.
This is the next step. There was no-one at fault in the match in which Chauvin was injured. All protocols were observed, all due diligence practised. There was no foul play involved. And yet, still, a young man died having a bit of fun.
In this particular incident, Chauvin was hit by a double-tackle.
The lawmakers have taken steps to reduce the danger levels at that phase, law adjustments which appear to be working. The trials in the Under-20 championship to lower the acceptable height of the tackle to the nipple have proved positive, with significant reductions in the amount of concussions reported. There has also been a view that double-tackles should be banned.
Changing laws can work. French sources tell me that the incidence of serious injury at the scrum has dropped dramatically since the ‘‘hit’’ was taken out of the engagement. The same sort of change needs to happen again.
It will not be a straightforward process. There are other facets in the sport that need addressing, notably the more philosophical one of what we want rugby to be about. A sport of massive collision and eyeballs-out confrontation? Or a sport of guile and skill and sidestepping evasion? Too much emphasis has been put on brawn and not enough on brain. That needs rectifying.
This feels like a seminal moment for the game. Let us make sure that good things happen as a result.