Less should be more in brave new rugby world
Burnout. It’s a word that has been all but requisitioned by the GAA. Or its critics anyway. But it isn’t an issue restricted to those playing our native games. Sport’s lucrative but compromising marriage with business hasn’t just led to an expansion in the amount of money involved, it has resulted in an explosion of events at the top level.
There isn’t a sport that is oblivious to the potentially ruinous consequences.
Talk to any prospective Irish Olympian and you will be regaled with tales of endless globe-trotting for obscure competitions. Turn on the TV and there is likely a golf or tennis tournament ticking over with all the excitement of a funeral mass in some godforsaken corner of the world. On and on it spills, like the magical cooking pot of porridge in the children’s fable that consumes a whole town.
We have had the infamous kite that was flown about a proposed 39th round of Premier League fixtures away from English shores, the ongoing debate as to whether the NFL can shoehorn two more regular season games into the schedule and we are currently churning through the guts of a never-ending rugby season.
Or maybe it just feels that way.
The damp squib that was Ireland’s World Cup exit, the eviction of the provinces before the Champions Cup knockout stages and the national side’s recent struggles in the Six Nations have turned what had the potential to be a champagne season into a course of gruel and water. Italy and Scotland? The PRO12? It isn’t floating too many boats, is it?
We would likely think differently if the forecast was brighter, but all those reverses have allowed issues such as concussion and general player safety rise to the top of the rugby agenda. The recent call by 70 so-called experts in the UK to ban tackling from schools rugby is an obvious example as to how the narrative has turned away from Garry Ringrose and garryowens.
Ireland’s injury woes, both during the World Cup and in the lead-in to the Six Nations, has certainly concentrated minds on these shores given the shallow nature of the talent pool. Talk has been rife of the need to change styles, to eschew the physical and engage in a mystical brand of running rugby that keeps bumps and bruises to a cosmetic level.
It’s a nice thought, but its pure rot. Rugby without tackling is like a French market without cheese, whether that be at schools level or in the Test arena, and Andrew Trimble skewed the ridiculousness that has attached itself to much of this debate when asked on Monday if maybe Ireland played too attritional a game.
“I don’t see another way around it,” said this most affable of Ulstermen who very nearly strayed close to downright annoyance at the query. “The game has become very, very physical and very direct. If you don’t win collisions on the pitch, then you don’t win games. Us being too attritional? It’s a strange criticism, to be too attritional.”
He’s right, you know. How often have we been treated to the maxim about teams “earning the right to go wide”? It may be that rugby’s laws are tweaked to reflect the increased emphasis on injuries, but the essence of the game will never change. If it does, the game ends. What could be looked at with greater intent is the volume of games they play.
We may pride ourselves here on the IRFU’s renowned player welfare programme and how it allows our top talent to catch breath at various points during a season when their European counterparts are being chewed up by the mill, but try telling that to Peter O’Mahony or Sean O’Brien right now. Or Paul O’Connell, for that matter.
How many of the roads we drive on were built long before traffic jams were even a thing? The same can be said for rugby and the administrators — and sponsors — who helped usher in the professional game back in 1995. How could they have known that the game they cared for would morph into the monster we have today?
Maurice Field played inside-centre the first time Ireland played England at Twickenham in the professional era. He stood six feet tall and weighed 14st 4lbs, roughly, that season. Fast forward to two weekends ago and the man wearing 12 was fellow Ulsterman Stuart McCloskey who had three inches and almost three stone on him.
Add that physiological revolution to the modern demands and it guarantees trouble.
Ireland played 10 tests in that 1995-96 season. Joe Schmidt’s side will have chalked an exhausting 17 off their lists by the time the last whistle rings in their ears in Port Elizabeth, South Africa at the end of June. The schedule doesn’t ease up after with a fourth November test pencilled in, for Chicago against the All Blacks, and a Lions tour to New Zealand in the summer of 2017 for some.
So, by all means, use the rule book to make the game safer, but it’s the fixtures list where the greatest benefits can be accrued.
World Rugby and everyone at top end of the game need to take stock and admit that, in this instance at least, less should be more.
- Email: brendan.obrien@ examiner.ie
- Twitter: @Rackob
