“The game’s gone soft…”

Leicester second-row Will Spencer was last night handed a four-week suspension for his shoulder-to-head “tackle” on Wasps hooker Tommy Taylor on Sunday. The disciplinary panel found that the challenge was reckless and Spencer – who pleaded not guilty – was handed the mandatory 6 week suspension. As is the way with these things, mandatory rarely means mandatory, so he got a couple of weeks off for his previously good disciplinary record.

The response from senior figures within the game has been as confusing as it has been dispiriting. We might expect players of the 1970s and 1980s to moan about the game going soft. Or, at least, that the game is now involved in an obsessive quest to remove risk.

But comments from those involved in the modern game – from Leicester coach Geordan Murphy’s suggestion that the game has become “too politically correct” to prop Ellis Genge complaining “we might as well be playing touch rugby nowadays” – are profoundly disappointing.

Ross Tucker – a sports scientist who advised World Rugby on law changes on contact with the head – found in his 2017 study that the

“…propensity to cause an HIA (head injury assessment) was significantly greater for active shoulder tackles,front-on tackles, high speeder tackles and an accelerating tackler”. He further found that the greatest risk was to the tackler – 78% of HIAs caused by head-to-collisions are suffered by the tackler.

Tucker believes that players and coaches are conflicted. And it’s easy to see why. His own research found that front-on shoulder tackles and collisions in which the tackler accelerates into contact are the most successful in stopping the opposition. The most effective technique is often to stay fairly upright and drive into the ball-carrier’s chest. Even where the tackler gets everything right, there’s the risk of a head to head collision. If the tackler gets it slightly wrong, or the ball-carrier starts to duck or slips, the potential for serious head injury is increased. As Tucker found

“The optimal coached technique for performance may thus be at odds with the optimal technique to reduce head injury risk”

Among the complaints of people involved with the game about “the game going soft”, it’s been reassuring – if worrying – to read about the experiences of other players.

Kat Czekaj, whose husband Chris is now at Bedford after a long career with Cardiff Blues and a spell in France, wrote an alarming series of tweets yesterday outlining the effects of concussion, from seizures to anger, depression and forgetfulness.

The former Australian Rugby League player Ian Roberts was concussed a dozen times in his career. Some years after retiring, and having forged a new career as an actor, he found that he was struggling to remember his lines. He agreed to take part in a neurophysiology study at La Trobe University along with 25 other former Rugby League players, and a control group who had never played contact sport. The ex-players’ group were found to all have symptoms of “irreversible long-term brain damage”.

Tucker’s study led to World Rugby adopting a new tougher approach to reckless and accidental head contact from January 2017. Two new categories of dangerous tackles would now receive serious sanction:

1. Reckless tackle – where a player knew, or should have known, that her/his attempted tackle risked making contact with an opponent’s head (yellow or red card)
2. Accidental tackle – where contact with an opponent’s head (penalty only at most)

Crucially, in both cases, sanctions may apply even if the attempted tackle began below the level of the shoulder.

In this case, Spencer is significantly taller than Taylor, and Taylor’s knees were bent at the point of contact. But Spencer would have hit an upright Taylor around the level of the shoulders. And that’s the crucial point, and that is why the challenge warranted a red card. Spencer should have known that, by aiming to hit Taylor in the chest, any slight deviation or miscalculation could result in a head collision.

Ben Cisneros – in his excellent Rugby and the Law blog – makes the point that shorter players do not receive any less protection that tall players. It is the taller player’s responsibility to ensure they don’t take the shorter player’s head off.

Back to Murphy’s comments that “…I see the game becoming very, very different to the game I played and loved”. Cisneros is absolutely right to say that is just the point – the game is very different now to the game Murphy played. It is different because our understanding of injuries, the way they occur and their long-term impact is continually developing. The game’s administrators are to be commended for trying to get to grips with spear tackles and tipping players in the air. They should be further praised for attempting to address the serious risks of head collisions.

The game needs to get serious about brain damage, because that is what this is. As Ian Roberts writes, we need to drop comforting euphemisms. This isn’t a bit of a knock. and seeing a player staggering around isn’t funny. She or he has just received a brain injury. The damage can be serious, and is irreversible.

Finally, the complaints of players and coaches at Leicester Tigers are particularly troubling. It’s understandable, maybe, that Leicester would be annoyed at losing a player to a new-ish law interpretation. Their focus will necessarily be on the next game. But that is precisely why player safety issues need to be thr focus of administrators – the health of players must trump all else. But it’s barely a fortnight since their club-mate Dominic Ryan was forced to retire, citing repeated blows to the head as his reason for stopping. They should know – better than most – how serious this issue is.