Rugby’s autumn internationals are almost upon us and dark thoughts hover over lovers of the sport. One day soon a professional rugby player will die playing the game. The players are fitter, bigger, stronger, faster and too powerful and it is no longer a 15-man game. It is a 23-man game: more than half the team gets replaced so the intensity and impact never subsides. Rule changes around the breakdown to encourage attack have had the opposite effect, meaning that defences line up across the pitch, no space is created and every game is 80 minutes of unsustainable collisions. Seasons go on longer, players get no rest and they keep smashing into each other. The vogue for double tackling — one goes low, one high — to prevent the offload means that a conventionally sized standoff, like Quins’ Marcus Smith, could have two 130kg giants coming at him at the same time. Unpleasant.
Already several marquee names have been lost for the early part of the season, like Lions George North and Ben Te’o, Jack Nowell, Billy Vunipola, and Manu Tuilagi as well as countless others. Clubs won’t be able to sustain this — they can’t afford the squad size, and they will send players back on who were taken off for being unconscious. Referees can’t always keep up. Clermont’s French international scrum-half Morgan Parra was unconscious after a collision during the weekend European Cup clash with Northampton but later came back on. That should not have been allowed.
Is professional rugby heading for some sort of Armageddon? This is a tougher game than the American NFL because it is more fluid, with players working in attack and defence. Look at the size of the La Rochelle team: no titches in there, just behemoths.
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