From the Sunday Times :
The average Six Nations player weighs 3 stone more than in 1955, prompting calls for rule changes to reduce harm from tackles
World Rugby faces mounting pressure to change its rules to protect players from explosive tackles and potentially devastating injuries as a report reveals the average weight of international players has increased by nearly 25% since the 1950s.
A study of international rugby union players reveals that the average weight of a player in the Five Nations championship in 1955 was 13 stone 5lb (84.8kg). The average weight of players in the England squad announced last week for the upcoming Six Nations is just under 16 stone 7lb (105kg).
“Injury severity is increasing, and this may be linked to greater forces (caused by greater body mass) occurring in contact,” says the study published in the BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine journal in November. “[Rugby union] law makers should adjust the rules to encourage speed and skill at the expense of mass.”
The authors searched for matchday programmes on eBay for the Five Nations and Six Nations tournaments between 1955 and 2015 to obtain details of the weight and height of the players.
In 1955, just one out of 75 players in the Five Nations weighed more than 15 stone 10lb (100kg). In the Six Nations competition in 2015, this had soared to 49 players out of 75. The average player weight in the tournament was 16st 8lb.
In March, World Rugby, the governing body for rugby union, will meet in Paris for a review of possible laws that could help reduce injuries. There have been calls for reform after the deaths of four rugby players in France in just eight months, and the increasing severity of injuries suffered by players in England.
The researchers found that forwards had become steadily heavier between 1955 and 2015, with the weight of the pack, comprising eight players, increasing from 112 stone to 144 stone.
The report says that Isaac Newton’s second law of motion — the force applied is the product of mass and acceleration — is an important one in rugby. “Most humans cannot significantly increase their maximum running speed or their acceleration, but it is possible to modify body mass,” states the report.
When Ireland played England in the Five Nations at Lansdowne Road stadium in Dublin in February 1955, team captain Nim Hall, from Huddersfield, weighed just 12 stone 6lb. Hall’s modern-day counterpart, the England full back Elliot Daly, weighs about 14 stone 11lb. Harry Williams is one of the heaviest members of the England Six Nations squad at 19 stone 12lb.
Doug Baker, 89, fly half with Hall in the 1955 England team, weighing in at about 13 stone 7lb, said the game in the amateur era seemed gentler and more friendly, with training sessions only once or twice a week. “We would meet on the Friday and have a runaround on the pitch and play the game on Saturday,” Baker said. “We were much lighter then and did not have the collisions they have today. ”
The England Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project, published earlier this month, revealed that the average severity of match injuries — the time taken for a player to recover — for the 2017-18 season was 37 days, compared with just 16 days in 2002-03. On average, there are 3.6 injuries for each match.
Dr Simon Kemp, medical services director at the Rugby Football Union, said: “We need to look at the injury data and see if there are changes to the laws that can be made.”
Topic: Rugby injuries get worse as weight of stars leaps 25% (Read 2042 times)
Always a Wasp