Grotesque lengths and weights rugby will go to must be reined in

The Xv-a-side game has developed into an unnecessarily dangerous business, says David Hamill

Ihave been an enthusiastic follower of rugby all my adult life. It is now more than 50 years since I first stood on the old terraces at Murrayfield.

I admit that I often travelled to the ground more in hope than in expectation.

Ironically, now that there is, at long last, a greater sense of optimism in the Scottish camp, I find my enthusiasm for the game beginning to wane.

Why? Rugby has always been a contact sport, and quite rightly so, but in the last few years it has developed into an unnecessarily dangerous game.

No longer do television commentators talk about the tackle.

It has become the ‘hit’, and it worries me when pundits revel, almost salivating, in the violence of the moment when the irresistible force meets the immovable object.

Such is the violence of the collisions in modern day rugby that I fear for the future health and wellbeing of many of today’s club and international players.

Of course, it can be argued that the participants have chosen to play the game knowing the risks involved.

But if I had a young son today who was considering whether or not to take up rugby, my advice would be emphatically ‘No’!

It is a welcome advance that the game is starting to take head injuries more seriously, but it needs to be recognised that the human body