In the light of the new laws regarding high tackles, concussion protocols, and this week’s tragic passing of South African legend Joost van der Westhuizen, it is time that player weight limits are discussed once more. In my opinion, they should be employed to avoid future injuries to players, and they need to be implemented soon.
I base this on the equation: Force = Mass x Acceleration. The forces that modern professional players are exposed to rises every year, and this is not due to opponents getting faster. Reports suggest that recruiters are sent out to the Pacific to look for some of the biggest (literally) rugby potential to beef up their ever-growing packs. Just last week, Walid Maamry, the 17 year-old Toulon prodigy, was included in France’s U20 Six Nations squad. The lad is 6’11” and tips the scales over 25 stone (a monster 142kg)! And we thought Uini Atonio was a big boy…
As we learn more about nutrition and training, we are finding just how far the human framework can go. The big players are now often as lean and potent as the most lithe wingers. Even the lightest players are often muscled to the level of bodybuilders. Few problems there. But bones are like cast iron – highly durable, but fail catastrophically when pushed past their point. The flesh is still genetically the same squidgy cushion it has ever been – its lack of ability to deal with heavy hits unchanged. Nor, crucially, is the spongy grey matter of our brains any different either. The protection for this organ in particular is nowhere near suitable for modern impacts; some may remember Graham the car-crash proof human (Google him if not) designed to show what we would need to evolve to look like to withstand low-speed car accidents. Impact studies on modern scrums seem to imply the current game has car-crash scale impacts already.
If we are already beginning to see lists of wounded longer than fit, and players are retiring early through injury – Ben Marshall of Connacht this week had to retire from concussion at just 26 – then what can we expect when the average weight of forward players in particular starts to escalate past the 20 stone threshold? Injuries happen, it’s a physical game (who knew?) but the fine margins between good tackle and bad, and the speed and intensity at which the game is already played, means that the last thing needed is the risk of increasing weight. All it does is raise the stakes in what is already a fairly brutal game of Russian roulette. We are not Graham.
So the answer is (in one way) simple. Bring in a weight limit on players, to stop this arms race. If we are able to get a good balance now as to treatment and injury prevention through new laws as is already happening, then it need not be a conservative, lightweight bar either. But it would have to be position-specific too – otherwise all players would end up identikit, and the quality of the game would suffer. A rough high-average measure on today’s players could work, which would hypothetically look something like this:
Front Five – 20 stone / 127kg limit
Back Row – 18 stone / 114.5kg limit
Backs – 16 stone / 101.5k limit
Here’s a quick appraisal of what this would mean for the match-day 23s of the 6 nations teams on Week 1, if it were imposed on them today, in their match-day positions. Listing those who currently fall over the limit (weights according to Wikipedia):
Scotland: Alex Dunbar, Simon Bergham
Ireland: Tommy Bowe
England: Maro Itoje, James Haskell, Ben Te’o
France: Remi Lamerat, Louis Picamoles, Uini Atonio
Italy: Givanbattista Venditti
Wales: George North, Jonathan Davies, Jamie Roberts
(Currently just under 10% of players, 13/138).
I am sure many will argue tooth and nail against such interference – but in the light of Joost’s passing, it needs to be asked if we are putting entertainment ahead of the players’ welfare.
By Huw V-J
try encouraging your son to play rugby when he is a lightweight…demoralizing and eventually discriminatory
the skill is being replaced with brute force
bring back Gareth Edwards and Sean Williams and watch the grace not the impacts
Haylie,
In New Zealand that organise junior rugby by weight bands rather than age, so as to encourage skills development in those who develop physically at an early age, and avoid discouragement for the others.
We should introduce it here.
Didn’t Joost die as a result of ALS/MND?
Motor Neurone Disease, but they made a link with playing Rugby (I googled it!)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/30036056
Yeah, so they’re investigating it to see if there is a link? I think pre-emptively implying a link is a bit tabloidy and undermines the argument presented in this piece.
This article had been on my mind for a while now – in fact the real prompter for writing was the article on Walid – and then the day I was going to send it in anyway, Joost passed on. Given that they fear there may have been a link, and that the science over concussion injuries’ long-term effects is still relatively unknown but with a lot of worrying signs (see NFL, Boxing etc), I felt tying it in together made sense. Put it this way, if even one other professional player active today ended up in the same place as Joost because our sport didn’t do enough to combat it, or was waiting for absolute 100% certainty of causality, then I would consider that a crime.
By that logic should we not be putting a speed limit on how fast players can run? To make sure the forces don’t get too high?
Coach correct tackle technique. Get m/j coaches to put the player in the centre of what they are doing. That way the big early developer shouldn’t dominate a game to the detriment of the late developer – simply so the coach can brag about winning the U11 super mega rugby cup!
Are injuries in the premiership not at a low point over the last ten years? And recovery time quicker than ever?
In the past couple of years we have started to see a shift from big physical sides to teams that can play the ball 1-23 and that look to create and exploit space. (Look at u20s sides Eng have been putting out and their success compared to France/SA).
In my opinion challenging coaches to buy into that mindset of playing the game is the best way to keep injuries down. Not restricting people of a certain weight from playing.
Perhaps tie their legs together with variable length straps according to their height? This is a farcical discussion. Athletes are getting bigger and the game has to be adapted to cope with that reality, not by banning big blokes from playing. Getting rid of benches that enable coaches to change things around if things are not going well would be a start. Max of 3 players on the bench, subs for injury only would be a start.
Funnily enough I did oh-so-briefly consider the speed side – and as is clear, there is no way of limiting that. The wrong assumption is to say that this is all useless, because the weight side IS controllable if so desired, and CAN limit the Force involved.
I think the desire to play the ball is helping to create the lighter, more capable teams already – but not every side is doing this. My limits were deliberately conservative, they are not designed to stop big players from playing; they are designed to put a cap on just how big a player can be brought in as a battering ram in certain positions.
As for ‘farcical’, Andy, yes athletes are getting bigger but in rugby that’s largely because all the other players are too – if there is a cap, at least some players wont feel the need to sacrifice natural speed and ability for raw strength and mass. While getting rid of subs benches would probably have benefits in some other areas, I don’t think you would address the problem of big unfit players much – instead you’d likely see them falling ‘injured’ at the suspiciously handy 55min mark. How on earth do you prove an injury is real or fake, unless you have a fake blood capsule to hand? It’s as unmanageable as Rich’s point on slowing players down, sadly.
Having weight restrictions would directly exclude people. a 6’10” lock is always going to be on the heavy end unless he’s a stick.
the method I quite like the sound of is getting rid of the subs bench, except for medical reasons
if all players have to all go the full 80 (or perhaps even make a match longer) they’re going to tire to the point of being defensively ineffective. the only way for them to last (particularly props and second rows) would be to drop some weight so they’re not carrying around so much bulk. You’d (hopefully) see a natural decrease in the average weight of players as well as having the added benefit of opening the game up towards the end.
Not going to happen but I totally agree. If the game went back to 15 v 15 players would have to be conditioned differently. This would immediately get rid of mammoth props,trained to last no more than 50 minutes.The ability to change front rows at will has taken away a lot of the battle for dominance that used to be one of the most enjoyable facets of the game.
You do run the risk of barring tall players, yes – but I did look into that, and you may notice from the above ‘barred’ players playing in the 6N Round 1 that it does not include Devin Toner, Richie and Jonny Gray, Sebastien Vahaamahina, Joe Launchbury (and Itjoe would be well under if playing Lock) – in fact, no locks are barred (despite Richie Gray and Toner in particular being 6’9.5” and 6’11” respectively). Point being, you are still able to field very big, tall men without transgressing the proposed limits. I didn’t come at the project with a ‘let’s make this a brutal cull’ attitude, I promise!
I suppose at least with a weight limit there could be a weigh in style press conference the night before where they all get in each others faces and throw chairs at each other…
Isn’t junior rugby in New Zealand played in weight rather then age categories…I think up to age 14. It is one of the reasons they have such good skill sets throughout the team; Retallick probably played centre for a while and Ben Smith flanker. Whilst kiwis don’t shy away from contact I think this experience of playing with and against people basically the same size as you puts the emphasis on speed of thought, identifying space and releasing teammates into it.
This would be an ideal first step, and if it worked really well then it might even stop the need for the weight limit categories entirely. And if it engenders free running and smart play, that’s icing on the cake.
I have met a number of real-life front row men who look EXACTLY like Graham the car-crash man.
Just to throw this one out there, if you want to try and make the game more aerobic in order to make the players smaller and have fewer big collisions, other than limiting players weight and the size of the bench, what about increasing pitch sizes so there’s more space?
Sound idea on paper, but you’d never get all (or even any) of the professional clubs and national sides in the world to adapt / rebuild their stadia to comply.
Its a good article and to be honest, I am not sure that it is quite as mad an idea as it seems at first. It may be slightly more workable to have a “pack weight”, so that the exceptional big beasts can still play, but need to be offset with lighter players?
I was rather drawn to a recent interview with Ben Franks on the London Irish website where, when asked what differences he notes between the Premiership and Championship, he cites the size of the players. Generally bigger in the lower tier!
I believe that generally speaking the better players will rise to the top irrespective of their size, and the problem with controlling it would not be at the elite/top level but at the lower levels, where I may suggest, it is a far bigger problem.
As an aside, I bumped into the All Blacks at Heathrow airport recently (Autumn Internationals time) and I was very surprised at how small they were (relatively speaking). Certainly I have seen far bigger teams playing at Level 5 and 6. In fact far bigger third XV’s in some cases!