A Very Different School by Peter Pollock

įurthermore a New Zealand study using instrumented ear patches to measure head impact acceleration found that under nine year olds playing rugby union with tackling experienced head impacts of a similar magnitude to American high school and collegiate football players despite the rugby players being younger, lighter and slower. A New Zealand study also across all age groups combining injury insurance claims data with exposure data from a range of surveys found playing rugby (one game every three weeks) was 460 to 530 times more dangerous than cycling (a half hour trip three times a week). Ī survey carried out by the Australian Sports Medicine Federation across all age groups taking participation into account found rugby league, rugby union, and Australian rules football had the highest rates of injury. A meta-analysis by Pfister et al found rugby, ice-hockey, and American football had the highest concussion rates in children, 4.18, 1.20, and 0.53 concussions per 1000 athlete exposures respectively. The few studies which compare youth injury rates between sports show higher rates of injury for collision sports than for non-collision contact sports.

Collision sports where “athletes purposely hit or collide with each other or with inanimate objects (including the ground) with great force” include rugby, ice-hockey and American football. Rugby union and rugby league are the most commonly played collision sports in the physical education curriculum of schools in England. We call on CMOs to act on the accumulating evidence and advise the UK government to put the interests of the child before the interests of corporate professional rugby unions and remove the tackle and other forms of harmful contact from the school game. The data in support of the call to remove the tackle and other forms of harmful contact in school rugby is compelling. In March 2016, scientists and doctors in the Sport Collision Injury Collective (SCIC) called for the tackle and other forms of harmful contact to be removed from school rugby. Most injuries in youth rugby are due to the collision elements of the game, mainly the tackle. Evidence shows that collision sports, such as youth rugby, carry high rates of injury

A Very Different School by Peter Pollock