- Joined
- Jan 20, 2004
- Messages
- 270
- Post Likes
- 44
- Current Referee grade:
- Level 8
taken from a social media post from a very experienced Referee
Attended a meeting last night with the Berkshire RFU Council representative who was reporting back to the county about the meeting the members had that they voted on re the tackle height …
left me angry, sad, frustrated and disillusioned …
If you LOVE rugby as it’s played at the moment at NON PROFESSIONAL level … i.e. 30 normal players, trying their best in a physical CONTACT team sport, where players will occasionally get injured (sometimes quite badly, broken leg/arm/hand, dislocation of limbs, accidental clash of heads etc etc).
It was clear that there are MACHIAVELLIAN forces high up in both WR and RFU who want to see the end of the game as it’s played at the moment at NON PROFESSIONAL level (acknowledgement of the level is key) where the over riding mantra above all else is “safety” of the players and that is paramount over anything else, whether clubs go to the wall or the product looks nothing like it did, as long as they can say to themselves the game is now safer, it will NOT matter to them that thousands of girls/boys/women/men are no longer playing the game, we’ve all grown up loving playing/officiating/spectating …
PROFESSIONAL rugby has a major problem with players getting CONCUSSION, this is because they are bigger, fitter and stronger and the collisions they have are MASSIVE, because they know they will NOT get hurt because of their conditioning …
The French study of lowering the tackle height showed that on average, there was one less concussion per season per team (in a 14 team league), not exactly a massive reduction in player safety!
If you want to make NON professional rugby safe, as one lady from a Level 8 club pointed out last night “make it touch rugby” …
We are in a fight to the death on this, lose this and there will either be no contact rugby played in 10 years or it will be so sanatized that no one will want to play …
If you LOVE rugby in its present form, please feel free to share, we must get a groundswell of opinion from normal rugby people to oppose this from the RFU … and WR (who are actually the bigger culprits)
Better still, just de select your Council representative (the free tickets they get for every England game might concentrate their minds when they realise they won’t get them anymore) and put someone in who will represent the normal non professional player/coach/administrator/supporter ….
Failing all of the above, will the last person out the room turn the light off on non professional rugby!
Attended a meeting last night with the Berkshire RFU Council representative who was reporting back to the county about the meeting the members had that they voted on re the tackle height …
left me angry, sad, frustrated and disillusioned …
If you LOVE rugby as it’s played at the moment at NON PROFESSIONAL level … i.e. 30 normal players, trying their best in a physical CONTACT team sport, where players will occasionally get injured (sometimes quite badly, broken leg/arm/hand, dislocation of limbs, accidental clash of heads etc etc).
It was clear that there are MACHIAVELLIAN forces high up in both WR and RFU who want to see the end of the game as it’s played at the moment at NON PROFESSIONAL level (acknowledgement of the level is key) where the over riding mantra above all else is “safety” of the players and that is paramount over anything else, whether clubs go to the wall or the product looks nothing like it did, as long as they can say to themselves the game is now safer, it will NOT matter to them that thousands of girls/boys/women/men are no longer playing the game, we’ve all grown up loving playing/officiating/spectating …
PROFESSIONAL rugby has a major problem with players getting CONCUSSION, this is because they are bigger, fitter and stronger and the collisions they have are MASSIVE, because they know they will NOT get hurt because of their conditioning …
The French study of lowering the tackle height showed that on average, there was one less concussion per season per team (in a 14 team league), not exactly a massive reduction in player safety!
If you want to make NON professional rugby safe, as one lady from a Level 8 club pointed out last night “make it touch rugby” …
We are in a fight to the death on this, lose this and there will either be no contact rugby played in 10 years or it will be so sanatized that no one will want to play …
If you LOVE rugby in its present form, please feel free to share, we must get a groundswell of opinion from normal rugby people to oppose this from the RFU … and WR (who are actually the bigger culprits)
Better still, just de select your Council representative (the free tickets they get for every England game might concentrate their minds when they realise they won’t get them anymore) and put someone in who will represent the normal non professional player/coach/administrator/supporter ….
Failing all of the above, will the last person out the room turn the light off on non professional rugby!