There is no brain damage or head injuries from the scrum, neck back and shoulder injuries only there is no force on the head. The tackle is interesting as the common misconceptions are its high tackles. If you come in clotheslining someone you can damage the head but get a red card. World rugby released stats on concussions and in 73% of occurances at professional level, the injury occurs to the tackler. The main drivers here are poor technique, placing you head across the body or leading with the head. SOB was murder for this and explains a lot.
2nd place where I see it happen is when the tackler is rolling away from the ruck the attacking team are going into the ruck off feet and catching the tackler in the head with a knee or foot as collateral damage. Refs were concentrating on this a lot at the start of 2020 but have faded away. Again no need to change laws just enforce them.
As for conditioning, the fitter you are the more you can concentrate on proper technique. You make bad decisions when tired. The likes of Dan Leavy, JVDF and will Connors are great examples of coaching good technique. Sexton throws his body into tackles hence hes injuries.
From what Thompson is purposing is less contact sessions in training and more contraction on technique which is spot on imho. Reducing number of subs will make teams pick players to last 80 mins rather than having 2 bigger guys to do 50 mins
Too many piano pushers, not enough piano players.
They should reduce the numbers on the field so thereās some incentive to try and run around lads rather than having to go over them. Thereās absolutely no need for the srcum either, what a ridiculous piece of pointlessness. Get rid of that and you can get rid of most of the fat lads with no coordination.
Maybe reduce the number of players to 7?
Sevens is rubbish. Theyād be better off going with tag
Does Rugby League have these problems ??
Maybe should reduce the numbers.on the field so.more.space to.play with rather than having to burst through with brute.force collisions.
And, with rucks as you say 2nd largest cause, maybe do away with them and just have a set tackle/play the ball.
Scrums, while periphery to concussion you say, could be made less dangerous and just make them engage with less.force and hold.
Finally, letās call our scrum half dummy halfā¦
I know Iām being facetitous with the above but thatās basically the difference with League who additionally are far superior at the technique of tackling and still have a huge problem with concussion.
I just donāt know what the solution will be tbh. Head trauma seems unavoidable no matter how hard we try get rid of it in the two codes.
Reduce the numbers to zero
Check out Boyd Cornder as one example. Top.player in Australia for long time. He alone has had half a dozen or more bad concussions just this season and yet returned and played away
Anyone here had multiple concussions? I had one after a car accident and it was very unpleasant. I canāt imagine what it would be like repeatedly
Good post but Iām not sure about this point. I presume teams are already getting their players as fit as they possibly can already. At least this way theyāre not playing the full 80 minutes and the tired mistakes probably happen more at the end.
In NFL the tackling technique is completely different, youāre not supposed to bind at all. But I think youāre being optimistic if you think that a good technique never causes a subconcussion - Alix Popham says he has had over 100,000 subconcussions, he seems to be counting every tackle. Steve Thompson is talking about seeing stars on the squat machine.
I had a rugby friend in college who actually played Rugby league for Ireland at one stage. I remember him complaining about having multiple concussions one time and how heād come back from a concussion too soon. He was weird and depressed for months. At the time Iād no idea what he was talking about.
NFL tackling technique is very poor. On broken plays like interceptions and returns they all tackle like Jacob Stockdale
Head trauma is unavoidable and your right. Mitigations around the injuries have improved but need to improve further. The ruck one really annoys me as you see it in every game and its a penalty under the current laws. Nothing needs to change just enforcement. There is always going to be risk
Scrum safety has greatly improved with the bind pre set.
I have had 2. 1 poor tackle technique at 14 and another was more embarrassing went to block a kick and got the ball straight to the temple
All sport should be blind to gender
I got 2.awful ones and a number of smaller one. First big one would have been u14s, puking and couldnāt focus or lift my head. Recall the warmth of the car heading home and my parents telling me to.sleep it off there as they knew no better. Dangerous in retrospect.
Last one was at 20s and jersey slung on.to.my head. I donāt recall it but.my oldman followed me in the dressing room when I was taken off and he said I was stark naked muttering and didnāt recognise him. Terrified him. Was gaga for the day and not right for a few days.
My brother went into seniors.year before last straight of school.and picked up a couple concussions in space of a weeks first season. Didnāt say anything after first one as was part of ire 20s with a training camp starting the Monday after he got the knock which he didnāt want to miss. Was clearly rattled but went off.to camp. Holding tackling bags first day, got rattled again and again said nothing.
There a serious amount of fellas in that younger age bracket who would still likely keep their mouth shut as missing a couple weeks just isnāt an option in their head. Shur, theyāre bulletproof they think, be grandā¦
Its a bad dose. I have been lucky over the last 10 years tbf. I recall one lad getting concussed holding a bag. We had a great laugh at the time, but in retrospect not good. A few lads I know have stopped playing early due to knocks from school and playing on. They are trying to stop the rot. Eoghan cross is a good example great player. He started reffing and was touch judge for the munster match last week.
The best way for rugby to survive long term is to play like this.
I think the advice now is to let the person sleep if they can carry on a conversation beforehand
yes