Players being pushed beyond breaking point

ELLIOT DALY was walking around the players’ car park at Welford Road on Sunday evening with his arm in a sling and two fingers on his right hand bandaged together. For one of the poster boys of English rugby, it was an apposite look.

The latest Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project (PRISP) report, released yesterday, confirmed the game in this country has never been more dangerous and debilitating.

In the same Premiership game in which Daly needed oxygen for a compound dislocation of two fingers, Wasps also lost Dan Robson and Jake Cooper-Woolley early and James Gaskell to what he fears is a season-ending ankle injury.

Leicester, meanwhile, had Jonny May knocked out and Manu Tuilagi removed after damaging a pectoral muscle.

Just the usual collateral damage from a sport in which match injuries and the severity of those injuries went up in the latest recorded figures.

The clubs and the RFU are sufficiently alarmed at the injury surge to have initiated the launch of a professional game action plan yesterday, which included a request to World Rugby to consider lowering the legal tackle height.

Given the ever-increasing power of the athletes involved and force of the collisions they put themselves through every weekend, injury is an almost inevitable by-product.

The roll call of early retirements this season – Tom Croft, George Lowe, Winston Stanley, Eifion Lewis-Roberts, Will Fraser and Tom Biggs – tells its own story.

The gladiators know the risks from their chosen contact sport and willingly take them. Sometimes, though, they need protecting from themselves.

What should really concern the game in this country about the audit is the spike in the number of injuries sustained in training – an alarming 36 per cent. These were not just minor calf twinges. The average lay-off time was 33 days.

The report noted a “significant increase in the incidence and injury burden during full contact training” in 2016-17. The most common injury was concussion.

A light has been shone recently upon the situation with England, where Eddie Jones’ training methods have come under fire from the clubs because of the number of players they are losing on the back of them.

Those clubs also need to take a look at their own backyard. The full-on, no-holds-barred session, usually conducted on a Tuesday, is part of the fabric of the game in the Premiership. The belief is that it helps hone players for a physical, attritional league.

But at a time when rugby is almost becoming a once-a-fortnight sport rather than once a week in terms of the demands it places on its participants and the recovery period it requires, these sessions are merely adding to the load and, in an increasing number of cases, taking players beyond breaking point. It is time for a rethink. The Professional Game Board – which comprises the RFU, Premiership Rugby and the players’ union – have commissioned further analysis on the current training volumes and contact exposure in the Premiership.

The results will be shared this summer with directors of rugby and the England management in an attempt to plot a safer way ahead. They should invite along to their pow-wow a representative of the NFL. In 2011, American football, concerned with the number of concussions it was dealing with – and fearful of their potential legal cost – imposed restrictions on full-contact training both for pre-season camps and during the season itself.

It is time for the Premiership to follow suit.

“Clearly the PRISP report has identified some significant challenges for us in relation to injury and player welfare,” said Phil Winstanley, rugby director at Premiership Rugby.

“Player welfare has to, and will, remain at the centre of everything Premiership Rugby do as an organisation, and working with the RFU and RPA, we have identified immediate actions which we have to take in addition to the work that we are already doing in this area.

“It is clear, though, that this is not just a Premiership issue. This is also a world game issue and we look forward to engaging with World Rugby to identify solutions that benefit all.”

Clubs must look in own backyard