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that woman on the radio this morning sounded completely hysterical
How completely unsurprising that the professor discussing extensive scientific research gets dismissed as a "hysterical woman".
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/female-hysteria_n_4298060.html
did you listen to the radio broadcast konabunny?
Getting safer still does not equal safe, or even safe enough.
I'm all for full-contact rugby, but in the right environment and with the right supervision, and my instinct is that many schools can't provide that.
WRT the benefits of sport vs the dangers. Clearly sport is a good thing to instil discipline, teamwork, fitness, reduce obesity rates and so on. But to those that say that rugby gives those benefits at the expense of a few injuries - I suspect you can get a lot of the benefits from touch versions of the game.
Kids will always fall over and break bones, sprain ankles, etc. playing any type of sport. The risk / benefit ratio however is still massively in favour of the benefits of physical exercise. That's not the point here, rugby is a specific, violent, collision orientated game and [u]in the wrong hands [/u]substantially more dangerous for severe injuries than the majority of other sports.
What definition of 'injury' did they use for that chart, Matt? My lad comes home covered in bruises and strained stuff after rugby.
Rock climbing comes out of that quite well, but I imagine that while injuries are less likely, when they do happen, they are far more likely to be life-changing.
My view on school rugby is that it is a good thing, provided they actually coach technique rather than just contact, and try to make sure the bigger, stronger lads aren't just thrown in to mash up the tiddlers.
The shortage of PE teachers competent to coach rugby seems to be the main problem.
Who did that piece of research it's terrible, how can you compare meaningfully sitting on a bus or fishing against rugby?
In fact when did a car or bus journey become a leisure activity?
In fact when did a car or bus journey become a leisure activity?
In about 20 years it probably will be, for me. 😀
No activity is entirely risk-free, so it can be useful to compare across a whole range rather than just focus on sport.
far more inclusive
I suspect you can get a lot of the benefits from touch versions of the game
One of rugby's great strengths is that it is a game for all shapes and sizes, touch is great for good and fast ball players who tend to thrive at most sports - but not for your typical prop.
I would dispute how low horse riding is in that table. Many years ago one kid died and another was badly hurt doing schoolboy motox on one weekend, ROSPA got involved and when they did a comparison horseriding came out way worse for serious injuries.
I listened to the broadcast. "Hysterical woman" were the last words that came to mind.
I didn't feel her case was particularly well argued, but neither I think was Perry's position either.
There is always room for improvement of all games, and finding a way to improve the reality of rugby (ie that it's pretty injurious compared with many other mainstream sports) is no bad thing.
Whether or not at a personal level any of us think it was it wasn't harmful (we had plenty of concussions and broken bones and joints every year at school) is irrelevant.
would dispute how low horse riding is in that table. Many years ago one kid died and another was badly hurt doing schoolboy motox on one weekend, ROSPA got involved and when they did a comparison horseriding came out way worse for serious injuries.
The graph is about the number of injuries not the extent.
No activity is entirely risk-free, so it can be useful to compare across a whole range rather than just focus on sport.
No it isn't as common sense will tell you that sitting on your arse is less likely to result in injury than playing contact sport. But that data also fails to account for all the benefits of playing sport on general and mental health. It also fails to look at severity.
At least if you plotted them on a Risk matrix you might get a better idea, so as mentioned above the probability of a rock climbing, or motorcycling injury maybe lower than rugby but the consequences are in most instances going to be much higher.
I listened to the broadcast. "Hysterical woman" were the last words that came to mind.
yep, I've heard her on other programmes discuss this, and she's about as far from hysterical as you can get.
I don't understand why it's an issue to examine how rugby is taught and practised in schools to certain groups of kids.
Take the Scottish approach and extend the ban all the way up to the national team
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neither I think was Perry's position either
He sounded like a rugby player.. A bit concussed and dehydrated
What definition of 'injury' did they use for that chart, Matt? My lad comes home covered in bruises and strained stuff after rugby.
Yes the graph is pretty random, (insert sarcastic comment about footballers 😉 )
I would dispute how low horse riding is in that table. Many years ago one kid died and another was badly hurt doing schoolboy motox on one weekend, ROSPA got involved and when they did a comparison horseriding came out way worse for serious injuries.
Yes, the level of the injury (and whether reported) is good to be far more serious with MX & horses, pretty sure cross country eventing is getting on for one of the most dangerous sports you can take part in.
Excuse me while I rub some mud up my legs to make it look like I've been an active participant in this thread and the gym master won't shout at me after games.
Yes, the level of the injury (and whether reported) is good to be far more serious with MX & horses, pretty sure cross country eventing is getting on for one of the most dangerous sports you can take part in.
Probably true, but largely irrelevant in the context of this discussion. Kids are not being shoved on top of horses and sent off over cross country fences with inadequate coaching as part of the school PE curriculum. They are being sent out on to the rugby pitch.
Excuse me while I rub some mud up my legs to make it look like I've been an active participant in this thread and the gym master won't shout at me after games.
Four laps of the field! NOW!
So, using the stats from the picture Matt posted and a bit of fag packet maths, I make it that there's about one injury per every 300 rugby matches played.
One has to assume that many of those injuries will be skewed towards club rugby, where the weights (and very possibly aggression) of the participants will be greater, making the impacts bigger.
And what counts as an injury in those stats? I assume it's everything from a twisted ankle (of which there will be many, and with little to no long term impact) to a broken back (of which there'll be thankfully few)
As ever, unless someone can produce actual stats regarding serious injuries suffered at a young age through playing rugby, the debate will go nowhere.
My view on school rugby is that it is a good thing, provided they actually coach technique rather than just contact, and try to make sure the bigger, stronger [b]lads [/b]aren't just thrown in to mash up the tiddlers.
And where do girls fit in? Doesn't touch/flag rugby make it easier to have mixed sex sports?
As ever, unless someone can produce actual stats regarding serious injuries suffered at a young age through playing rugby, the debate will go nowhere.
You mean like stats that are limited to say schools and colleges...
Probably true, but largely irrelevant in the context of this discussion. Kids are not being shoved on top of horses and sent off over cross country fences with inadequate coaching as part of the school PE curriculum. They are being sent out on to the rugby pitch.
Depends on the school 😉
The comment was in reference to the 'wooly' nature of the info on the graph.
...more dangerous in the long term. Imagine a field full of 18 year olds, who have never been allowed (and therefore never taught correctly) suddenly being able to tackle. The whole lot would be off to A&E within minutes..
I don't see that as a problem. The 18 year olds would not be playing at school, given that they're 18, so they're presumably at a club. If they're at a club/team then they'll have been playing for that club or team already so will have been taught tackling then. Or they could be taught properly when they're 18.
One of rugby's great strengths is that it is a game for all shapes and sizes, touch is great for good and fast ball players who tend to thrive at most sports - but not for your typical prop.
No. It isn't. At 14 I was just scraping 5 foot and must have been sub 8 stone. (I'm now 6 foot and under 11 stone, and I was skinnier then). Rugby was just dangerous. As already said, at that size and weight, being tackled by a hairy, 6 foot+ tall, 16 stone, 15 year old 'man' is just dangerous. Especially if it's someone who already thinks it's funny to hurt people and has now got a great excuse to get away with it!
At best it's just unpleasant and will put people off sport.
There's no way I would engage with rugby or hockey at school cos they were games for sado-masochistic freaks and wierdos
For a lot of kids it's probably not a choice. Certainly wasn't when I was at school. You just get told "This term you're playing rugby". So once a week, you get 45 minutes of rugby. For about 10 weeks. So at 16 you might be told you're playing rugby, with full tackling because 'it never did me any harm'. But you've only played less than a dozen times, three years ago. Obviously at club level it's different because you might be training for 2 or 3 or 4 hours a week year after year and then playing a game most weeks too. But at most schools there simply won't be the time to learn to tackle safely. And if you then get a few years of not playing and come back to it you're going to be pretty much learning from scratch again.
Yes, the level of the injury (and whether reported) is good to be far more serious with MX & horses
Ah yes, I remember those days at school. "Right boys, everyone grab a motorbike or a horse from the store and start doing laps of the field". 😉
The worst bit was if you forgot your jodhpurs and had to wear the pair from lost property.
If schools were suggesting taking their kids skateboarding or mountain biking in games lessons and there was a similar injury rate everyone would flip out and it would never be allowed.
Rugby is dangerous, especially given how violent it was at our school. It's like alcohol, if it hadn't become a traditional part of our culture it would probably never be allowed now.
The graph is about the number of injuries not the extent.
Good point, well made.
Getting hit with an almost supersonic hockey ball was far more painful than being dumped on the deck and then trodden on by a 15 stone prop.
I always felt sorry for the little backs I did that to but at least I know the hockey ball was more painful now. I did get banned from hockey as apparently I was a bit of a high risk to the shorter players with the hockey stick 😈
I was often limping for days after a rugby game, in fact I didn't felt I had played my hardest if I wasn't injured in some way. Sadly I ended up with a back problem due to a gymnastics injury when I was younger which plagued me and a couple of nasty scrum collapses meant I had to go play with the non-team kids that would rather be inside reading or playing football 🙁
Teach kids to tackle properly. Train the staff properly and make sure the referees come down hard on dangerous tackles.
I can just see the whole of the southern hemisphere laughing at this and rubbing their hands waiting for the state of the England team in 8-10 years.
So, using the stats from the picture Matt posted and a bit of fag packet maths, I make it that there's about one injury per every 300 rugby matches played.
I worked it out as closer to 1:10, given there's 30 person hours of rugby in an hour of rugby.
And other stats might suggest that number is low, eg the Ulster Uni stats
Absence
A total of 825 schoolboys from 28 schools teams took part in the study during the 2014/15 school year.
The players were older boys playing for schools' first teams.
More than one in three of them suffered at least one injury during the season.
The researchers recorded 426 injuries in total, of which 204 resulted in an absence from the sport for longer than 28 days.
While sprains were the most common injury, about one in five injuries were due to concussion.
(although it's not recorded how many hours / games the 2014/15 school year consists, but if the graph data rate of one injury per 10 games is right, 426 injuries equates to 4260 games which for 28 schools doesn't stack)
And irrespective of the definitions that lead to how the data is gathered, as noted above it neither measures the severity of injury nor does it disguise that it is more than twice as dangerous as the next sport. So once again - an evaluation of why that is and whether it should be made safer seems appropriate; knee-jerking 'It never did me any harm' isn't.
😆The worst bit was if you forgot your jodhpurs and had to wear the pair from lost property.
I was kind of being a bit serious, there was a horsey club and along with a classic sailing yacht 😳
Seems like a good idea to me. Or just abolish Rugby. Not just in schools. All Rugby.
[b]I *ING HATE RUGBY!!![/b] Let me just repeat that.... [b]I *ING HATE RUGBY!!![/b] With every fibre of my being. Why?.....Well... at school, we had a huge, insane, Welsh borderline psychotic PE teacher who in attitude was reminiscent of this...
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and believed that we should play Rugby league, to the exclusion of all other sports, in absolutely any weather. The grimmer, the better. All character building apparently.
It was less a sport, and more a sort of primeval survival test. Or maybe a precursor to cage fighting? All it needed was the cage. Some of the people I went to school with hadn't developed far from monkeys, and had the same natural predisposition to ultra-violence as the zombies in 28 Days Later. All built like tanks as well.
I lived in constant fear of the weekly PE savagery. As did all of us whose exposure to industrial chemicals hadn't left us weirdly malformed, and physically massive. When the inevitable happened and a brutal tackle/assault saw me in A&E, I stared lovingly at the X-ray of my shredded ligaments and shattered cartilage, and nearly leapt for joy as the surgeon uttered words I had dreamt of hearing for so long....
Thats your rugby career over then
I hugged him and wept tears of unfettered joy
I've never played it since, and if it was on the telly, and you tied me to a chair to force me to watch a single solitary second of it - I'd rather headbutt the screen to destruction, even if it involved lacerating my face to ribbons, and bursting through a main artery in the process
Who says competitive sport isn't good for your mental health? 🙂
Having suffered neck and back injuries in school rugby in the 1970s and from which I still suffer, I'd be happy to see many elements of the game revised at school level, particularly any compulsion to participate. My Dad played at a high level, and I wanted to, but poor coaching decisions putting the tall skinny kid in the second row were to blame for what I suffered.
There's just no excuse for subjecting kids at that stage of their physical development to risks they're unlikely to appreciate in full. Keep impact out until they're considered old enough to make informed choices would be my view.
How completely unsurprising that the professor discussing extensive scientific research gets dismissed as a "hysterical woman".
It will be interesting to see how extensive it appears that she might have played fast and loose with research in the past.
[url= http://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2010/09/07/crying-wolf-when-media-reports-distort-research-evidence/ ]BMJ Blog response to her earlier calls for change.[/url]
Bravo Binners! 😆 😆 😆
1970s and from which I still suffer, I'd be happy to see many elements of the game revised at school level
and in 30 years you think it hasnt?
What definition of 'injury' did they use for that chart, Matt?
I am just seeking it out. IIRC, it was injuries that were recordable - so not bruises and scrapes. It was broken bones, hospital trips and more. I will find out why I think that.
It does seem daft to compare a contact sport with sitting on a bus or walking. BUT this is the core of my point - why do we get all upset about Tarquin walking to school as it is 'unsafe', yet drive him there and send him onto the rugby field?
it appears that she might have played fast and loose with research in the past
Well pat me on the head and call me mr intuitive.. you can detect that tone in someone's voice when they seem to relishing the [i]battle[/i] a tiny bit too much
It will be interesting to see how extensive it appears that she might have played fast and loose with research in the past.BMJ Blog response to her earlier calls for change.
I do love a good spat between researchers. 🙂
The normal pattern is for the scientist to make the over-reaching comments, confirm them, and then complain after publication that their words have been distorted.
Some have. I have a BIL who coaches in NZ and if we applied that approach here it would be a major step forward from what I've seen recently here.and in 30 years you think it hasnt?
More nanny state nonsense, fortunately not from the state just academics trying to make a name for themselves. Rugby is a dangerous physical game. I would wager far more people are seriously injured travelling to/from school than playing sports.
@binner top film that, wasn't he obsessed with Man U - I think that was the problem 😉
No. It isn't. At 14 I was just scraping 5 foot and must have been sub 8 stone.
Our scrum half was as small and he was a fearsome tackler, but because it didn't suit you doesn't mean the point is invalid.
On size my good friends son is 12 and the same size as current Bath winger. One to watch I'd say, just relocating back to UK from Singapore for school.
My lad has played for the local rugby league side from U8s to U12s and is looking forward to the new season! I'm not quite sure where the number of injuries quoted in Matt's chart comes from but I can honestly say that in 4 years of watching him and other age groups play I have only seen a very small number of injuries requiring a player to be removed from the field. If children are taught to tackle properly and [i]be tackled[/i] properly then the risk reduces. No surveys to back this up, just first hand experience of watching youth club rugby. He also plays for his high school team now and most of the players also play club rugby. Those who don't are given the extra coaching necessary. It's in no-one's interest for children to get hurt.
Last season we did carry a few injuries into the last few games. Of these only one was rugby related, a broken thumb. The others consisted of cycling injuries, a rope swing incident and the results of general larking about.
When I played at school, kick and clap, there was a similar lack of serious injury.
Rugby is a dangerous physical game [i]and forcing kids who are ill-equipped and ill-trained to participate in it against kids who are bigger, stronger and better suited to it leads to avoidable injuries[/i]
FTFY
I would wager far more people are seriously injured travelling to/from school than playing sports.
In total, or on a per hour basis? All sports, or just rugby on a per hour basis? And again; just because something may be more dangerous on a per hour basis than rugby, WTF is wrong with seeing whether there are means to retain the beneficial aspects while reducing the harmful ones.
[url= http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/03/what-schools-dont-want-you-to-know-about-rugby/ ]The Spectator has republished an article she wrote in 2014[/url]
In it she suggests there is no data. I find this difficult to believe as I know for a fact that our school doctor recorded all rugby injuries for his whole 30 year+ career at the school.
No surveys to back this up, just first hand experience of watching youth club rugby.
Anecdote ? evidence.