Rugby teams will be withdrawn from competition if their coaches do not attend injury prevention clinics under moves to make the game safer.
In a joint partnership, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union and ACC are spending $380,000 to reduce the number of serious injuries that cost millions in accident compensationeach year.
The plan involves compulsory injury prevention clinics for coaches, so that players are fit at the start of the season and know how to move into contact safely. Provincial unions have been told that they must withdraw teams from competitions if the coach or coaches have not attended a "RugbySmart" seminar.
Referees must also attend the seminars or they will not be appointed to control matches.
About 240,000 New Zealanders of all ages play rugby, and the injuries they suffer account for 20 per cent of all ACC sport and recreation claims.
Last year the sport was responsible for 4700 new ACC claims. New and continuing claims for rugby injuries cost $18 million.
Last year 14 players were seriously hurt. A spinal injury, which some of them suffered, can cost up to $9 million over the life of the claim. Such injuries occur mostly at the start of the season.
Coaches will get advice to help them with training programmes, particularly in the early part of the season.
The programme is based on ACC's SportSmart programme, a 10-point plan for sports injury prevention.
ACC chief executive Garry Wilson said it was encouraging that the union was making the issue such a priority.
In five years since ACC and the union had worked together, the number of entitlement injuries had fallen by more than 30 per cent.
Rugby union chief executive David Rutherford said RugbySmart was about safety first, but it recognised the need to lift team performance by educating players about fitness, tackling and scrum technique and injury management.
Everyone involved in the game had to take responsibility for safety and injury prevention.
Auckland Rugby Football Union chairman Ken Baguley said courses for coaches were run in the Auckland region last season.
He did not know of any teams being withdrawn because coaches had not attended.
