Rugby: Global season answer to player injury problems

John Mayhew. Photo / APN

Rugby needs a global season if officials are serious about player welfare, sports medicine expert John Mayhew believes.

If administrators were genuinely concerned about players' health their decisions were contradicting those aims.

"A global season has to come in rugby, it is the answer but it is more difficult because it is much more an international code than rugby league," he said.

The complexities of holding different competitions in a non-global season made it extremely difficult for rugby teams to be correctly conditioned.

"So if rugby is really serious about player welfare they have to devise a global season," he said.

Mayhew is in a unique position to compare the codes after being the All Blacks medical boss for many years and now doing similar work for the Warriors in the NRL.

It was extraordinarily difficult for the All Blacks to prepare players for a dozen tests dovetailed around other competitions each year.

His comments came as All Black coach Graham Henry talked about the flat patches some prospective test players had run into and the need to freshen them before the test programme.

Super 15 and NRL squads were a similar size but league had the advantage of training staff having their players most of the time and being able to time their run in one competition.

"We know by best assessment the optimum number of games for a league or union player each season should be about 20 to 25," said Mayhew.

"It is a guesstimate but if you look at any injury statistics, pre-season the injury rates are quite high, then they go for about 15 to 20 weeks then they start to peak up again."

Pre-season, players were injured as they resumed contact work then at the end the cumulative effect of a competition kicked in.

The middle of the season offered players a 70 to 80 per cent chance of avoiding serious injury.

The Warriors had four pre-season games but some players like Simon Mannering and Lance Hohaia played only one. Then they faced a programme of 26 NRL matches, finals, State of Origin and tests.

"Without going on a tour someone like Mannering might have a 35- game season and that is pushing it," Mayhew said.

"You can see the Super 15 injuries are starting to pick up and we will see that in the NRL. It is a natural graph which we see most years."

Jerome Ropati ruptured his Achilles tendon and that sort of major accident seemed to happen early each season.

Mayhew thought rugby offered a more awkward landscape with players having to deal with a variety of levels and coaches.

For example, if flanker Daniel Braid played for his University club this weekend on his comeback from injury, the Blues staff did not have the same control about what he did as the Vulcans and Warriors.

"The worry in rugby is that if you are a fringe international, you play Super 15 then you might play a bit of ITM Cup, you might pick up a few All Black games and then perhaps the Maori side.

"Every coach has different chunks of you and that is the problem. Every coach wants to win his competition to keep his job so they will have different ideas and needs," Mayhew said.

He did not know what the effects of a month-long break would do in the middle of next year's Super 15 series.

"It is an unknown," he said. "But the longer the season goes the higher the rate and risk of injury, that is a no-brainer.

"In a way, the NRL is easier because it is a continuous programme, and you have one lot of trainers and coaches and medical staff.

"If we had the ITM Cup and Super 15 running in parallel, it would help."