World Rugby’s deputy chief medical officer, Dr Martin Raftery, claims the men’s game could learn from the women’s tackle technique to reduce the number of concussions in the sport.
This comes after only one Head Injury Assessment (HIA) that did not result in a concussion from the opening six games of the Women’s Rugby World Cup compared to the seven HIAs from the first six games in the 2019 Rugby World Cup, two of which resulted in concussions.
That is, despite women carrying twice as much risk of brain damage in head knocks using the same laws as men.
Focus on tackle technique
Dr Raftery believes there was a notable difference in the tackle technique amongst other attributes in the women’s game and claims that the men’s game should learn from that.
“Sitting on the sidelines and watching the six games of this first weekend has been fantastic. The game has really developed,” Dr Raftery told the Telegraph.
“Two non-medical things that really struck me were the skills of the players, their passing skills, their tackling skills and their position in space.
“I think you can actually say for the first time that maybe the men can learn from the women. Maybe what’s happening is because they [women] are evolving in the sport, the focus has gone back to the basics of the game – passing, tackling.
“In the first six games we had this weekend, there was only one HIA. We’d normally be seeing far more than that in the men’s game.”
The one HIA from the weekend was Black Ferns star Liana Mikaele-Tu’u, whose situation was precautionary and did not result in concussion.
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Overcautious decision
“It probably didn’t need to be a HIA,” Dr Raftery said. “It was overcautious but that’s what we want – we’re trying to protect the players.
“There’s a lot of evidence in the literature saying women are more susceptible to head injuries than men, but we’re not seeing that at the moment.
“For me, the key message is that the technique is still the way to control head injuries within our sport. There was one particular passage of play – it was the English team – they were passing the ball from left to right, right to left, and left to right again, going through the hands of probably six or seven players each way. The passing was phenomenal. I don’t think you’d see that in the men’s game.”