>> Cain: Bring back the ruck to save our rugby

BRING back the ruck, and do it now, before it is too late. I mean the proper ruck, not the static pile-up impostor littering the modern game. It is the quickest, most effective, and most beneficial way of reducing the alarming increase in concussion injuries in the modern pro game. However, before explaining why the ruck is the best cure for Rugby Union’s concussion epidemic, let’s consider the evidence.

The rapid rise in concussion, which now accounts for 22 per cent of all injuries, was highlighted this week by a detailed injury audit – the Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project (PRISP) – conducted by the RFU, along with the PRA and Premiership Rugby.

It showed that in the 2016-17 season concussion was the most frequently reported match injury for the sixth year in succession.

It also found that the severity of injuries of all types increased, with those requiring three months or more recovery at an all-time high. The most common long-term injuries were concussion, and ruptures to the anterior cruciate knee ligament and hamstring.

Of these, concussion is viewed as by far the most detrimental to the future of Rugby Union. However, it is prompting an alarmingly blinkered response, with the game’s medical experts and disciplinary officers the most culpable.

They have missed the point by focusing on the outcome of specific incidents, and advocating swingeing punishment for any action by a player that threatens a head injury, rather than focusing on the root cause of the concussion problem.

In the vanguard is Dr Simon Kemp, the RFU’s medical services director. Kemp was clearly vexed that increased sanctions had not resulted in a fall in concussion in the Premiership, but a rise. He said: “If we are serious about zero tolerance for head injuries, we need to be confident we can show that it is actually happening. And that is the aim: zero tolerance.”

What this overlooks completely is that this Draconian outlook is contradictory in a contact sport. One clear injustice is that it shifts the responsibility for safety almost entirely on to the tackler, despite the fact that many attacking ball carriers will dip into contact by dropping their height significantly just before impact.

There is no need to change the tackle law, because it covers all the bases as it is. A stiff-arm, clothes-hanger, or leading shoulder tackle at neck/head height whether deliberate, or reckless, is dangerous play and deserves the toughest sanction.

However, the idea that any accidental contact with the head in the tackle, maul, ruck, or in an aerial contest with both players with a fair chance of winning the ball, is worthy of zero tolerance is not just unworkable, it is absurd. It is a contact sport, and there is an element of risk which all players accept – just as those who participate in horse-riding and skiing do.

That is why it is time to rewind, and reexamine the most damaging law decision taken in my time covering this sport – the neutering of the ruck.

The key decision relating to the ruck, and the maul, pre-professionalism was the principle that a scrum put-in would always go to the side going forward in contact. As a consequence, the old ruck law ensured automatically that the majority of forwards were committed to the contest for the ball.

The aim was to stay on your feet at a ruck and, as a unit, drive over the tackled player to win the ball, if need be by dislodging any tackler killing the ball by raking him backwards, out of the ruck. Done well it was dynamic and produced quick, clean ball which was hard to defend against.

It gave backs room to run at their opposite numbers, and meant the defences were more fractured with a variety of tackles required. However, they were almost invariably a man-on-man contest in open play, and often involved a cover-tackling angle rather than huge head-on collisions involving gang tackles or double tackles commonplace in the modern game.

The drawback was that on rare instances in high profile matches the rucking was either too inaccurate, or deliberately indiscriminate. This led to head cuts from boot studs which bled profusely, and were highlighted on TV – although there were few serious lasting injuries.

However, rather than police this stringently by using television footage to ban the occasional idiot kicking

“Concussion is viewed as by far the most detrimental injury to the future of Rugby Union”

heads rather than rucking bodies, after the 1995 World Cup the game’s administrators started to bow to the health and safety lobby.

They were scared into thinking that the game had an image problem, and accepted too easily the PC mantra of mothers not wanting their children to participate in a contact sport which allowed boots on bodies.

IRB/World Rugby started tinkering, and rather than policing the ruck properly, ensuring that boots were used only in a backward motion, they outlawed boots on bodies in April 2005. It was done despite serious opposition from the media – this correspondent included – and a number of influential players, coaches, and referees, who warned that there would be serious repercussions.

The result? We have a game with static mini pile-ups, usually involving five or fewer players, with the unengaged forward behemoths standing in a flat-line Rugby League-style defence ready to launch double tackles. Typically, this involves two tacklers with a combined bulk of nearly 40 stone (240kg) – one going high, one low – launching themselves head-on at a ballcarrier of say 17 stone (110kg).

The defender hitting high aims for the chest, but with the frequent outcome that a shoulder rides up into the face of the carrier concussing him, while the tackler going low often gets the carrier’s hip or knee to his temple and is knocked silly.

And the lawmen who encouraged the super-sizing of the game by getting rid of the ruck – a dynamic, aerobic forward contest which had evolved over the best part of a century – wonder why concussion has become a major problem?

It’s time to bring back the ruck – and undo the damage.