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Fans Are Pointing Out A Fairly Obvious Problem With Plan To Solve Rugby's Injury Crisis

Fans Are Pointing Out A Fairly Obvious Problem With Plan To Solve Rugby's Injury Crisis
Gary Reilly
By Gary Reilly
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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.

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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.

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