Winston Aldworth: NZ Rugby playing catch up with rule changes to protect players’ heads

New rugby rules will apply at junior and community levels of the game. Photo / Neil Reid

OPINION:

Rugby’s latest set of rule tweaks are a well-intentioned step in the right direction on one of the sport’s biggest issues: protecting players’ brains from brutal collisions.

Under rule changes announced today by New Zealand Rugby, the first tackler must not hit the ball carrier above the sternum.

Of course, there will be naysayers, some of whom long for a return to the good old days when bruising and battering players’ brains was all part of the fun. What’s a spear tackle between mates, right?

There are other rule changes: Halfbacks can no longer follow the ball through a scrum and make a nuisance of themselves at the opposition No 8′s feet, and scrums must not be pushed more than 1.5m. The rules will be applied to community and schools rugby, not in top seniors club rugby and not in the professional game.

As much as all right thinking members of society will love to see less of halfbacks in the game, it’s the rule protecting the head that’s most notable. A recent Scottish study painted a grim picture of the brain-injury risks associated with rugby. After surveying former rugby internationals, researchers found the risk of these ex-players developing a dementia diagnosis was just over twice as high as it would be for the general population; Parkinson’s disease was three times as high. For motor neurone disease, the risk was 15 times as high.

The new rules were trialled last season in selected grades of community rugby, as rugby’s rulemakers sniffed around the fringes of the issue. The rival code does it different. Over in league, rule changes seem to be whistled up, scribbled down and rolled into action in the space of an afternoon.

Ironically, it’s at least partly because the offload long beloved of leaguies has swept through all grades of union that the call for rules to protect players’ heads has grown in volume. For decades, kids in both codes have modelled their offloads on the efforts of top league players — back in the day it was Bradley Clyde, later SBW.

Rugby coaches once told young players to “tackle around the legs; get the ball carrier to the ground”. Over time, that message changed to “wrap them up, ball and all”.

Which is where the head clashes come into it. When the first tackler is throwing their torso around the ball carrier’s torso and arms, a head knock for either party is more likely.

Many of those lamenting how things were more simple back in the day are missing the point that at all levels of the code today bigger players are tackling in a more upright position. Backlines run flatter and there are simply more tackles — even at schoolboy level — than there were in the amateur era.

There’ll be reasonable arguments that this is merely window dressing — rugby administrators scrambling to play catch up behind other sports which have already confronted the grim reality of brain injuries. They might well be playing catch up, but at least they’re getting into the game.

The message from the sport’s top flight is still scrambled. In the week that NZ Rugby announce these changes, All Blacks management are arguing at a judiciary hearing that it was absolutely fine for Brodie Rettalick to slam his shoulder into the back of a Japanese player’s head at a ruck in Saturday night’s test match.

Rugby has a long way to go. Obviously, under these new rules, head knocks will still happen — the second tackler is still welcome to pile in, tackling around the chest in accordance with the game’s current laws; the first tackler might merrily knock themselves out banging into a stray knee. Rugby is still a brutal sport. And the brutality is still one of its most oddly fascinating aspects.

Mitigating the brutality is perhaps its most fascinating challenge.