Rugby: Gang tackles blamed for spinal injuries

By MARTIN JOHNSTON and NZPA

Increasing spinal injuries among rugby and league players have put "gang tackling" under the spotlight.

Already this season six people have suffered serious spinal cord injuries. Last year spinal units saw five cases in total.

Most of the injuries are coming from tackles and mauls, with spinal injury experts fingering gang tackling - where one person goes low around the legs and another player tackles higher - as the cause.

The head of Christchurch's Burwood Hospital spinal unit, Dr Richard Acland, said it was difficult to single out one factor, but he named the speed of the game, momentum and the rise of "gang tackles" as possible causes.

The injuries could not be classed as an epidemic, but "if we get another two or three, then there's a problem."

Dr John Mayhew, the All Blacks' doctor and medical adviser to the New Zealand Rugby Union, said yesterday that the game had become much more physical in the past four years, especially with the emergence of gang tackling.

"Tackling is the most dangerous part of the game. That's where the majority of injuries occur."

But with such small figures coming from the spinal units, it was too early to draw conclusions, he said.

Schoolboy rugby bosses are also worried about changes to the game, saying it has become a gladiator sport featuring big tackles and giant players. St Kentigern deputy principal Neil Ritchie said the game was now more about physical confrontation than a test of skill.

ACC figures show serious rugby injuries jumped from four in 1995 to 18 last year, although it reported a drop in injuries overall.

Changes to scrum rules in the mid-1990s appear to have cut injuries from scrums, although this year's Christchurch death came after a collapse, but medical authorities are worried the growth of powerful tackles in so-called offensive defence is to blame.

Gang tackling is designed to force a turnover in rugby, which has become less about set-pieces than second-phase ball.

Auckland Hospital's emergency department has not collected figures on rugby or league injuries, but its clinical head, Dr Peter Freeman, expressed worry that the body-twisting potential of gang tackles could cause spleen or liver damage.

"If you've got somebody taking a player out across the shoulders at the same time as somebody taking them out across the hips, then you've got a shearing [opposing] force and that causes more potential for injury."

The manager of the Otara Spinal Unit, Glenys Stilwell, said that with two serious cases already this season compared with three rugby or league cases for all of last year, "we're bracing ourselves that there may well be more.

"There was a period a couple of years ago we had none. After the initial rugby scrum changes there was a significant improvement for a year or two but it certainly - end of last year and this year - seems to have been on the rise again."