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Tackle height lowered in community game by RFU.
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<blockquote data-quote="Crash Hamster" data-source="post: 1116564" data-attributes="member: 84693"><p>It's going to be expensive and time-consuming to prove or disprove. Having just done some quick and dirty maths, about 8 in 10000 (0.08%) of the population under 65 will have dementia. Whether that is increased in players of contact sports (and how you establish a control group in those cases) will be a source of argument for decades.</p><p></p><p>On a personal basis, I stopped playing after a nasty neck injury in my late teens; I thought the tap on the shoulder from the Grim Reaper to be sufficiently serious for me to consider how a second such injury might effect my fun, career and life. A shame, but not as much of a shame as being paralysed.</p><p></p><p>The problem with all actions like these is that they're difficult to argue against, because it's easy for their proponents to reply "so you want people to be brain damaged and die horribly?" Their argument is, however, predicated on the idea that it's possible to make things completely safe, which is clear nonsense.</p><p></p><p>There needs to be an honest discussion about how many deaths is acceptable. If none, rugby (league and union, boxing, MMA, football, American football etc) need to be banned. Of course, you then have to look at other avoidable deaths for the sake of consistency:</p><p></p><p>Smoking 77800 deaths a year</p><p>Dementia 66400 (includes **subset below)</p><p>All road deaths 1600 (includes the subsets of *road accidents below)</p><p>**Early-onset dementia (<65) 1000</p><p>Falling down the stairs 700</p><p>*Car occupants 680</p><p>*RTCs where excessive speed is listed as a cause 400</p><p>*Pedestrians 360</p><p>*Motorbikes 310</p><p>Trains 300</p><p></p><p>We make an occasional fuss about smoking, are completely paranoid about a comparatively tiny amount of road deaths, no-one cares at all about people falling down the stairs even though you're twice as likely to die on a staircase than a pavement.</p><p></p><p>Rugby probably has low-hanging fruit to pick to make the game safer, but it cannot end up like the national obsession with "speed kills", when the odds of someone doing 37 in a 30 zone and killing someone is basically zero.</p><p></p><p>(and I'm not callously disrearding any individual's loss in the face of tragedy, just pointing out that it's possible to recognise the significance of an event to an individual and the complete insignificance of the same event in a population of 68M)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Crash Hamster, post: 1116564, member: 84693"] It's going to be expensive and time-consuming to prove or disprove. Having just done some quick and dirty maths, about 8 in 10000 (0.08%) of the population under 65 will have dementia. Whether that is increased in players of contact sports (and how you establish a control group in those cases) will be a source of argument for decades. On a personal basis, I stopped playing after a nasty neck injury in my late teens; I thought the tap on the shoulder from the Grim Reaper to be sufficiently serious for me to consider how a second such injury might effect my fun, career and life. A shame, but not as much of a shame as being paralysed. The problem with all actions like these is that they're difficult to argue against, because it's easy for their proponents to reply "so you want people to be brain damaged and die horribly?" Their argument is, however, predicated on the idea that it's possible to make things completely safe, which is clear nonsense. There needs to be an honest discussion about how many deaths is acceptable. If none, rugby (league and union, boxing, MMA, football, American football etc) need to be banned. Of course, you then have to look at other avoidable deaths for the sake of consistency: Smoking 77800 deaths a year Dementia 66400 (includes **subset below) All road deaths 1600 (includes the subsets of *road accidents below) **Early-onset dementia (<65) 1000 Falling down the stairs 700 *Car occupants 680 *RTCs where excessive speed is listed as a cause 400 *Pedestrians 360 *Motorbikes 310 Trains 300 We make an occasional fuss about smoking, are completely paranoid about a comparatively tiny amount of road deaths, no-one cares at all about people falling down the stairs even though you're twice as likely to die on a staircase than a pavement. Rugby probably has low-hanging fruit to pick to make the game safer, but it cannot end up like the national obsession with "speed kills", when the odds of someone doing 37 in a 30 zone and killing someone is basically zero. (and I'm not callously disrearding any individual's loss in the face of tragedy, just pointing out that it's possible to recognise the significance of an event to an individual and the complete insignificance of the same event in a population of 68M) [/QUOTE]
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Tackle height lowered in community game by RFU.
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