Banning the tackle in school rugby: Let’s put it into context.

By Kass Gibson (@kassgibson) Proponents and critics of tackle rugby agree that the tackle is the most injurious aspect of the game.[1,2] Nonetheless, fierce debate regarding serious injury aetiology, harm minimization and maximizing health benefit in rugby has emerged.[3,4] I write as an academic and former Physical Education (PE) teacher who supports neither banning nor teaching […]

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Tackle injury mechanisms in sport: How different is past, present and future research?

By Sharief Hendricks My colleagues and I are currently working on a couple of reviews in rugby, and like most reviews, we went back as far as 1980. As we illustrated last year, the majority of rugby research has been published in the last ten years and a relatively small proportion has been produced before the […]

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Crying wolf: When media reports distort research evidence

As a researcher who has spent a considerable period investigating the risks of injury 1 2 in rugby, and setting up and evaluating injury prevention programmes designed to mitigate the risks 3, I read the BBC media report of July 4, 2010 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10501327) quoting Professor Allyson Pollock that ‘high tackles and scrums should be banned […]

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