NFL can teach rugby how to sidestep pain game

SOME of the brutally shocking details revealed in Dylan Hartley’s compelling life story, excellently told by Michael Calvin, should be a turning point for rugby. That was the only conclusion to reach after listening to Hartley and former England team-mate James Haskell exchanging war stories on The Good, The

Bad and The Rugby podcast. A new focus on player welfare should start with taking a lesson from American football — by limiting the number of contact sessions imposed at all levels of the game. Because one issue kept recurring as this pair of virtually crippled thirty-somethings swapped details of damage done — the constant and repetitive full-contact training that denied them any chance to recover. It’s why both are now using every remedy at their disposal, from expensive therapies to low-tech fixes, just to stay upright and barely mobile. According to Haskell, England duty often seemed to involve nothing less than lying in agony on the pitch at Pennyhill Park, barely able to move… knowing he had another two hours of big hits, full-force scrums and brutal breakdown work to get through. While even some old-school coaches now accept they can’t carry on maiming players, if only because it will cause aspiring young athletes to run away from rugby, few within the game are offering up solutions. Look to the NFL, then. And study the collective bargaining agreement that explicitly limits this sort of training. No matter how much of a hard-ass your coach might be, he’s not allowed to have more than the prescribed number of ‘pads-on’ practice days. Teams have been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for breaking those regulations. Even the NFL’s ever-present performers play, what, 16 games a season? With another few games if they go deep in the play-offs. International rugby players forced into a virtual 12-month playing calendar should be afforded the same protections. Or else Hartley’s The Hurt will become a template for dozens of players writing misery memoirs about being used, abused and discarded.