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World Rugby will introduce new guidelines designed to reduce the amount of contact training performed by rugby players. The game’s governing body, which has worked with the representative body International Rugby Players (IRP), hopes that a six-point checklist will help reduce training-related injuries and improve performance by limiting injury. player contact load between matches.
The guidelines recommend limiting midweek contact training to two days divided into three categories: 15 minutes per week of full contact training in which players are not restrained and operate at high speed in body collisions. at close range, 40 minutes of controlled contact using anti-plate shields and pads, running at reduced speeds and 30 minutes of live training with high intensity lineups, scrums and mauls.
A global survey of 600 players found that top professionals undergo no more than 19 minutes of full training in the week leading up to a test match. “There is a misconception that there is a lot of contact training, but it’s less than you think,” said Joe Schmidt, former Ireland coach and now rugby manager for World Rugby. “It’s 19 minutes for the elite and 21 minutes for the professionals. We think we can reduce it even more.
“As a professional coach for 20 years, I found that we do very little contact training. The number of weeks I coached that we didn’t do full contact in a week would be the most common. “
Former All Black center Conrad Smith, speaking as IRP’s player welfare officer, said: “I have never had an injury in training in my 15 years of playing. and I’ve never seen a lot of injuries in training. I never met these limits, 15 minutes [of contact training] would have been the maximum for me.
World Rugby has come under pressure from pressure groups. Last December, former England and Lions hooker Steve Thompson led a group of retired players in a landmark legal case against WR, Rugby Football Union and Welsh Rugby Union after being diagnosed precocious dementia. The group also released a set of 15 modifications to try to minimize long-term brain damage. training in 2011. According to Éanna Falvey, chief medical officer of WR, this is not a clear comparison because the NFL is contested by 32 teams which are more easily regulated. In addition, 70 to 80% of injuries to NFL players occur in training compared to 30 to 40% in rugby.
However, a study published this year by the University of South Wales found that rugby players may experience reduced blood flow to the brain and cognitive function due to the cumulative effect of repetitive contact and not incidents. occasional concussion, further emphasizing the need for reduction of full contact where possible.
Even without the guidelines, World Rugby maintains that the game is a much safer environment than it was when Thompson was playing in the first two decades of the professional era. This is less true at lower levels, which is why WR has provided a six-point checklist for coaches to better protect their players by identifying and planning the four “touch points”. These are the total contact volume in minutes, the intensity of the collisions, the density of the impacts in the lapse of time and the unpredictability of the hits.
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