Players fear degenerative neck injuries and potential paralysis due to scrum laws
Hookers call on World Rugby to cut risk to necks
Alex Lowe, Rugby Correspondent
Hookers are pushing for action to prevent degenerative neck injuries and potential paralysis resulting from a law change in the scrum that was designed to make the game safer.
The Rugby Players Association (RPA) in England is putting pressure on World Rugby to find a solution to the “hidden” danger of axial loading, which persists despite being banned in 2019.
An investigation by The Times has discovered that male hookers are having to cope with an estimated 1,000 Newtons of force — the equivalent of 100kg — compressing their neck and spine at almost every scrum.
This is leading to players requiring neck operations at a much younger age. Scott Baldwin, the Wales and Worcester Warriors hooker, said that he had been three millimetres from being paralysed by a bulging disc.
Axial loading is the unintended consequence of the “crouch, bind, set” scrum engagement sequence that was introduced by World Rugby in 2013.
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The change was made to reduce the number of serious injuries occurring by closing the gap between the two front rows, thereby reducing the speed of engagement and increasing stability.
The two packs are supposed to be balanced, with daylight in between the front rows, but that is rarely the case.
Instead, the packs routinely lean forward, with enormous force being transmitted through the neck and spine of the hooker, whose head is being driven into the shoulder of his opponent.
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“It feels like your neck is about to snap. Imagine going to the gym now and putting 100 kilos on top of your head and you have to hold that weight for two to three seconds,” Baldwin said.
“You are one movement away from potentially ending your career, having a 12 to 16-week injury or, worst-case scenario, you are paralysed, you break your neck. I have scrummaged under the old laws and the new laws. Our necks were better off with the old laws.
“I had to have a disc replacement because of axial loading. When I went to see the surgeon, the surgeon said that since the law change he has seen a significant increase in operations on upper necks of hookers.
“For a surgeon to be saying that is quite alarming. The surgeon told me that if the bulge were three millimetres to the left then I could be paralysed.”
The RPA, Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby presented a scientific paper on axial loading to World Rugby in 2019 which contained contributions from international hookers including Jamie George (England) and Ken Owens (Wales). The practice was outlawed in the build-up to the 2019 World Cup.
World Rugby says it has reiterated to its referees the need to be vigilant in the autumn internationals to ensure both packs are balanced in the bind phase.
Baldwin said he would bet his mortgage that there has not been a scrum in the past two years without head-on-head contact in the bind phase.
Christian Day, head of player affairs at the RPA, believes this has become impossible for referees to prevent. “This was something you could only know about if you were a hooker or a front-row player,” Day said. “The evolution of the scrum engage sequence was a huge success. By removing the hit as much as possible the catastrophic neck injuries have reduced markedly. But by doing that we have created this other problem. Hookers are saying the scariest bit is not the engage any more, it is the bind, because they have nothing to mitigate against these [enormous] forces.
“The reason this is difficult to solve is that it [brings] a performance advantage to do it. I do think referees try to make it [the law] work but the players do it so much it has almost got to the point now where they can’t prevent it.
“It used to be an unwritten rule that hookers would get neck issues at the end of their career. Now we are seeing younger and younger hookers needing surgical correction.
“Now it comes to the question of how this can be mitigated. How do you remove some of the load? We are trying to find a solution. The solutions we have tried so far haven’t worked.”
In a statement, World Rugby said: “Player welfare is World Rugby’s top priority and the sport does not stand still in its evidence-based commitment to law review and evolution, and continues to monitor, review and act on injury trends in collaboration with players, coaches and medical experts.
“The scrum engagement sequence has reduced compression forces by 25 per cent versus the pre 2014 sequence and has also reduced overall scrum injury rates. Scrum stability and safety is paramount and everyone has a responsibility – match officials, players and coaches – to adhere to the laws, including acting positively to eradicate any practice of axial loading, which was outlawed in 2019.”
Topic: Cruse on axial loading (Read 1426 times)
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