If you think about any changes that are made are on a spectrum, and the easiest to do is to do nothing and leave things as they are, and the hardest thing to do would be to ban tackling above the belly button, as they were originally going to do in union, then lowering the tackle height to the armpit seems an ok compromise. The trial games were definitely a mess, but the data from those games showed it did significantly reduce the number of head contacts and accelerations, which is the primary objective. But a lot of work and dialogue is going to have to happen by all involved in order to make it watchable.



The coaches seemed pretty optimistic that the changes would be positive in the long-term, prior to the trial, but they'll know it will be a huge task to adjust in time for next season. I just hope they've started incorporating it into their training sessions.

Clearly he meant rugby union.

Check his funding. Am absolutely sick of banal statements in particular anti scientific statements being passed off as facts.

Agree 100%. I'll leave it here. If that's the future it's bleak. If folk are happy to sacrifice the game in pursuit of a perfectly safe future (never achievable, by the way) then crack on. Well done on achieving utopia. A joyless utopia, but who cares, eh?

Pottery to Metallica Clueso…

Yes but I don’t accept it’s necessary to go to armpit and below, that’s the point.



This isn’t scientific. It’s a process of trying to find evidence that someone is right. They’re clutching at straws trying to build a case to reduce tackle height in the senior game. The academy games were literally a shambles and all you say is that players need to get used to it.

Not necessarily mutually exclusive, Jim.

Let's just have done with it and switch the game to Artificial Intelligence.

Leave it to the bots and no-one gets hurt.

Only just seen wilkins (and Carney to be fair) reaction to the Hull red, I don't always agree with or like how he comes over but he was spot on with his emotion and what he said. Carney calls it an existential threat to the game, he's not really one for hyperbole, he's exactly right, if that card is a sign of further things to come then the game becomes unwatchable.

I am very confident that if we lower tackles to below the armpits that we get the same number of concussions if not more than we do from the current rules. We are just moving the risk to another area.

I had you as Patrick Swayze in Ghost

This is a really interesting article about how RU is trying to increase safety in junior RU, and how they fear kids are moving away from rugby because of injury concerns. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/ ... ury-crisis

This is a really interesting article about how RU is trying to increase safety in junior RU, and how they fear kids are moving away from rugby because of injury concerns. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/ ... ury-crisis