Is rugby a safe
sport for America’s youth?
by Lyle J.
Micheli, MD
Commentary by a past president of
the American College of Sports Medicine
(Found on the USA Rugby website)
I support efforts to establish rugby teams in American
high schools and colleges, and wish to alleviate any possible concerns about
the sport’s relative safety.
I think I offer a unique perspective on the subject
given that I have been closely involved in rugby as a player and supporter
since the early 1960s when I began playing the sport as a Harvard undergraduate,
and I am a physician who is a past president of the American College of Sports
Medicine. I am the author of over 200 scholarly journal articles on sports
medicine (including the first-ever published study of rugby injuries in the
United States); in my practice I have treated athletes of all ages from sports
as varied as figure skating and football; and I am the chairman of the
Massachusetts Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.
A popular sport
worldwide
Rugby is a dynamic contact sport that is played all
over the world by men and women of all different classes, creeds, and races. It
fosters friendship and camaraderie between players. To celebrate one recent
Christmas, men from the American and New Zealand research stations in Antarctica
played a game of rugby against each other on those southernmost frozen
wastelands. Most rugby players have played with and against people from other
nations.
Rugby is played in over 100 countries and is the most
popular team sport in nations such as Japan, Fiji, and Wales. This sport could
not be as popular as it is among the peoples of so many different cultures if
it were dangerous! In fact, the risk of injury in rugby is relatively low
compared to sports Americans embrace – such as football, ice hockey, and
lacrosse - a fact borne-out by numerous studies to ascertain the risk of sports
injury in different activities. The reasons for this are quite straightforward
to those of us who study sports medicine.
Why rugby is a safe sport – paradoxically
The main reason rugby players have a relatively low
risk of injury compared to football players is paradoxical – rugby players
don’t wear protective equipment. Thus the rugby player doesn’t have the same
disregard for the safety of his or her head, neck, and shoulders when tackling
or trying to break through a tackle. The other reason is that unlike football,
rugby is a game of possession, not yardage. Consequently rugby players don’t
tackle by “driving through the numbers,” as football players are taught to do
with their heads when tackling a player. In rugby, players are taught to use
their arms to wrap a player’s legs and let the momentum of that player cause
him to go to ground. Furthermore, in rugby there is no blocking, and so players
who don’t have the ball don’t get hit when they’re not expecting it.
One of the reasons rugby has a reputation for being
“dangerous” in the United States is because when the average American sees
rugby being played, he or she sees a free-flowing contact sport. Because it
doesn’t have the familiar stop-and-start character of football and other
TV-shaped sports, to the uninitiated rugby can appear confusing and “scary.”
Furthermore, while the bumps, bruises, and scrapes you
see on the elbows, knees, and faces of many rugby players can appear alarming,
they are of considerably less concern than the anterior cruciate ligament
ruptures, finger fractures and dislocations, and chest contusions
characteristic of a sport such as football in which heavy protective equipment
is worn.
Injury rates
I performed one of the first studies of rugby injuries in the United
States, which showed that compared to football, the incidence of injury in
rugby is quite low (10 percent in American club rugby compared to 52 percent in
NCAA college football). My study was published in the peer-reviewed American
Journal of Sports Medicine. Subsequent studies have supported my results.
It would be disingenuous to suggest that rugby players
never get injured. However, based on the numerous studies that have been done,
the scientific conclusion we must reach is that rugby is not as injurious as
certain other contact and collision sports that most of us believe deserve NCAA
status, and is a relatively safe sport in the panoply of athletic endeavours
available to our young men and women.
Since the early study I did, sports medicine has grown
as a specialty and there has emerged a considerable body of literature on the
safety of all sports, including rugby. If you review the literature you will
find no evidence to suggest that rugby should be denied a legitimate place in
high schools and colleges around the world.
For all the reasons outlined above, I have no
hesitation based on my personal and professional experience to declare that
rugby is worthy of a place in American colleges and high schools.
Dr. Lyle Micheli is director of the Division of Sports
Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and an Associate Clinical Professor of
Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is a past president of the
American College of Sports Medicine and currently serves as chairman of the
Massachusetts Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Dr. Micheli is
chairman of USA Rugby’s Medical & Risk Management Committee.