Rugby For All
Social rugby union is tackling the challenge of participation head on. Ben Hall finds out more
2003 sees England lift the World Cup with the infamous Jonny Wilkinson drop goal in extra time and the country celebrates. Post success is cemented with a rise in playing numbers and sees heightened investment in the game. In 2024, Twickenham has sold the naming rights, there are questions over safety. But go back to 1996 and there is a less certain beginning to the story.
The game votes to go professional and no one is quite sure what that means. Some clubs open the chequebooks to players, with football the model to follow. Skip forwards a few years and the numbers don’t add up and financial trouble befalls a club as big as Richmond. Closer to home, Fylde sell one of their pitches to balance the books.
In a physical sport, size, physicality and speed win games and success ensues. Clubs see the link and amateur and even school children begin to ‘bulk up’. The collisions are large and substitute numbers increase.
Fast forward and the 2023 season begins with changes to the laws of the game with an emphasis on safety. Rugby union wants to encourage player participation and sees the safety of players as imperative. Concussion statistics have been worrying and news articles about brain conditions in the post professional career of rugby players such as Steve Thompson and Alix Popham highlight the risk of collision to the general public.
Players aren’t designed to think about their own safety. In the National League structures, they are likely to be paid to play but without the full medical support of the professional teams. Below that level they rely on a team manager or team captain to assess their condition. Responsibility for someone’s health isn’t what they are trained in.
The concussion education to people in the game has given concussion the attention it deserves and the ‘Headcase’ online course highlights the recognition, removal from playing and returning to play as a process of reducing risk.
Step forward the law makers. Head on head contact represents the most dangerous tackle, so drop the tackler’s height by having a stiffer penalty for high tackles. Players complain that they are removing physicality but that doesn’t quite add up. It’s more ‘don’t change what I know’, because head contacts per type of tackle are the reason for the change and playing the sport hard is still an option. Will an increased awareness of concussion and an impetus on safety help alleviate new parents to the sport of their worries and help to grow the sport?
A rugby club is a place that the community can use to come together. Grassroots rugby as it as known, is anything below the professional level and has the benefit over football that arguably the enjoyment to the spectator is higher than the professional game. Fylde, Preston Grasshoppers and Blackburn are examples of some of the higher ranked teams locally.
Go to a Premiership Rugby match and there is a tennis like nature with long periods of kicking that takes place with interspersed moments of scrummaging. Throw is the sheer size of the players and you get some big gladiatorial-like collisions with the odd moment of skills and you have had a unique experience of what humans are capable of. Then there is your grassroots club.
It might seem slightly slower and more likely to have an error. These are players with full-time jobs training twice a week. They want to run and play with the ball in hand. It’s a more enjoyable game to watch like this albeit without the career defining jeopardy and cameras of the international games.
Don’t underestimate the effect that your intrigue to go and watch this season will have on your local club. The reality is extra spectators, extra income but having more people in the ground helps give a club soul. There is no designated place to sit or stand, so move around, but just make sure to wrap up warm! If there are young children with you there is normally somewhere they can play if they haven’t got the concentration for 80 minutes. That might even be the gateway to having a go on a Sunday morning as part of the mini juniors age group teams.
Age is no barrier either. Walking rugby might just be the social activity that keeps the physical activity levels up and maybe more importantly, the social interaction that is so easy to lose during the winter months.
There is a circular nature to the story. Money comes, numbers rise, physicality increases. Money goes, numbers fall, laws change and confidence returns. But once a club has gone, that is permanent. If you have a free Saturday afternoon or want to get involved, head down to your local club and make your own judgment on what all the fuss is about.
