Safety Hurts

Jovan Belcher playing for the Chiefs

By now I imagine many of you, sports fans or not, have read about Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher murdering his girlfriend and mother of his child and then driving to his team’s practice facility, before shooting himself in front of his coach and general manager. I cannot pretend to know why he did this and whether or not there was some sort of medical cause, but what I do know is that questions are being asked about whether or not he may have been suffering from any concussion related mental issues.

I am sure we will learn more once an autopsy is performed, but the fact that the question surrounding concussions is being asked legitimately proves in-and-of-itself that any time something bad happens to a current or former player, the question of brain damage is going to come up and deservedly so. We have enough evidence already about the impact concussions have and we also have enough evidence about just how common they are in American football at all levels of the game.

At the same time, the NRL here in Australia has banned the shoulder charge, which when performed correctly makes no contact with the head, however due to how often it goes wrong and head contact is made, the league has acted on it. The response has been near unanimous in disapproval. However, one must wonder if it’s situations like what is happening in the USA that is the actual cause behind the decision taken to ban the shoulder charge. Clearly everyone agrees now that concussions are probably the most serious regular injury suffered in contact sport, but we don’t like when rules are changed based on that fact.

The problem with the rule change though is that there simply isn’t a history in rugby league of brain damage as there is in gridiron. The cases of depression, memory loss, suicide and other problems regularly facing retired NFL players simply isn’t happening here to the same level. Four Corners on the ABC had a story on the impact concussions are having in Australian sport, so clearly there is a precedent for it here too; however it really seems to occur en masse in the USA. Yes we want to cut out concussions, but there isn’t evidence to suggest the shoulder charge specifically is a massive problem causing serious long term issues. After all, most of the research suggests the high impact, memorable concussion incidents that we usually think of aren’t actually the ones causing all the problems, but rather it’s the small, more regular impacts occurring between American football linemen that is the bigger issue.

Now some people may wonder why head injuries are so much more prevalent in the American game where players wear so much padding and helmets and of course are involved in so many fewer plays across the course of a game. Shouldn’t games like rugby or rugby league, which seems so barbaric to many in the USA, be dealing with as many if not more of these problems?

But the answer is no and I think I know why.

It’s the helmets themselves. American football players feel protected due to their padding and helmets and are trained to use them as weapons. Obviously recent rule changes are trying to crack down on this, but it still happens all the time and the players are killing themselves by doing it. It’s counter-intuitive.

I genuinely believe that if you had American football played without the pads and with only rugby headgear or even the old leather helmets the NFL players wore 100 years ago, you would see a drastic change instantly. Yes it would change the game itself quite a lot. Player’s instincts are currently a certain way and they would have to very quickly have to adjust, but I think it would happen a lot quicker than it is right now, where they change the rules to punish guys for doing what they have been taught to do since childhood.

I would love to see a one-off game of American football played in this manner. I can’t imagine it ever happening and if anything I feel like they will bring in more protection with new and improved technology. But honestly, they might just be doing more harm than good.

What is certain is that the game is changing and will continue to change as they try and solve this problem. The question really is though, what is causing the problem?

I Wish I Still Loved Rugby Union

Once upon a time rugby union was my favourite code of football. It was the only type of football I played in high school (very poorly admittedly) and the Wallabies winning the 1999 World Cup, along with the amazing Bledisloe/Tri-Nations victories in that era, remain some of my favourite moments as a sports fan.

In recent years however I have found myself slowly drifting away from the sport. I still watch some Wallabies games, I still watch the occasional Waratahs game and of course I follow the World Cup. But besides the spectacle that is the World Cup every four years, to me rugby has been falling further and further behind other sports. Hardcore rugby fans might not like this article but based on the statistics related to Super Rugby ratings on Foxtel, as well as diminishing crowd numbers, at least for the Australian teams, I clearly am not alone.

The Wallabies do still draw a crowd and have sold out the upcoming 3^rd Test against Wales here in Sydney, but rugby certainly is nowhere near where it used to be and in my opinion it’s because the game itself has dramatically regressed.

As rugby became a faster game with better athletes and better goal kickers, the amount of penalties at the ruck seemed to increase and has lead to the game basically being played between the 22s, with penalty kicking becoming the primary way to score. As soon as a team crosses halfway, they are happy to pick and drive until the opposition inevitably infringes and they get a shot at goal from distance. Try scoring on the other hand seems to be a secondary luxury. Hell, even George Gregan who began his career as an exciting player, started to stand around trying to talk the referee into giving a penalty rather than delivering quick ball to his backline for an attacking move. By the end of his career I despised Gregan.

Obviously this is a huge problem as what fans want, particularly casual fans, is attacking football with teams looking to score tries rather than chip away with shots at goal. But as the rules currently stand, there is no incentive for the teams to do so and thus I think it’s once again time to make some changes to rugby’s rules to encourage more attractive football.

The main change is to reduce the value of penalty shots from 3 to 2. This would mean it would take four successful penalty goals to beat one converted try. Teams would have to weigh up if they are better off kicking for touch, getting field position and going for 7 rather than settling for 2 and I think they’d become inclined to go for 7. I’m happy to leave field goals as 3, as they are difficult to execute and occur during open play, however if others think they should be reduced too I would be fine with it.

In conjunction with the scoring change, I’d start making a lot of infringements, particularly at scrums, only short arm penalties rather than full arm penalties. They already have started doing this in Super Rugby and it should be explored more and extended across all forms. Along with this, scrums should only be allowed to pack once. If the referee sees a problem, then he should call a short arm penalty straight away. The amount of game time lost to referees acting as scrum coaches is unbearable.

Some rugby purists might take issue with this, but honestly it’s not like rugby rules haven’t been changed a lot already. It wasn’t long ago that tries were increased from 4 to 5 and it also wasn’t that long ago where lifting in lineouts was illegal. The game needs to adapt or die and if some people can’t see that right now it is doing the latter, than they really won’t see it coming when the sport has serious financial problems in the future due to revenues drying up, at least in Australia.

Rugby will never lose its hardcore fan base, but that’s true for every sport and in that sense the hardcore fans actually don’t matter. What matters are the rest of us who should be rugby fans but no longer have the level of interest we used to. What matters are the kids who are growing up following only rugby league rather than both league and union.

I desperately want rugby to survive and I want to care about it as much as I once did, but until changes are made to make it entertaining again, I’m afraid it’s just too difficult to watch.