A group of over 70 doctors and academics have called for a blanket ban on tackling in rugby in schools across the UK and Ireland and, as you can imagine, that plan is not going down well with fans of the game.
The letter, which has been sent to Minister for Health Leo Varadkar, outlines the unarguable medical belief that young players are at a greater risk of injury, particularly serious head injury, in relation to older, fully developed players.
According to the letter;
The majority of all injuries occur during contact or collision, such as the tackle and the scrum.
These injuries, which include fractures, ligamentous tears, dislocated shoulders, spinal injuries and head injuries can have short-term, lifelong and life-ending consequences for children.
The letter goes on to high the link between 'repeat concussions and cognitive impairment and an association with depression, memory loss and diminished verbal abilities.'
It will come as no surprise to anyone in this country that something needs to be done about concussion in rugby. The game needs to adapt and survive so to speak but as an awful lot of fans have pointed out today, banning youngsters from tackling is, in practice, highly unlikely to be the correct way to go about preventing concussion and similar head injuries at the top of the game.
Banning contact rugby till age 18 effectively precludes full rugby after; it's more dangerous to start unskilled, powerful adults tackling.
— Brian Moore (@brianmoore666) March 2, 2016
My view is that this is nonsense. What's yours #rugbymatters https://t.co/biMNXCQf6W
— Matt Dawson (@matt9dawson) March 2, 2016
Imagine trying to coach a whole load of 18 year olds how to tackle for the first time...
— Ben Coles (@bencoles_) March 2, 2016
Every player then advancing to the senior game would have woefully inadequate tackling technique and thus a danger to themselves and others.
— Alex Shaw (@alexshawsport) March 2, 2016
Essentially, that's simply a tiny snapshot of the fairly obvious problem that has been brought forward today. Young players need more protection of course but in reality, it would seem that the call for no tackling until 18 is really just a watered down version of calling for a ban on rugby entirely.
You simply can't have rugby players learning to tackle at 18 and expect that to be a solution. Plenty of people would suggest that a blanket ban is the only way to go if you really want to protect young players but, unless the final plan is to halt the game entirely, it seems unlikely that will be the ultimate solution.
