Nick Cain column: Cage this monster by downsizing the game  

The biggest monster facing the healthy future of Rugby Union is the ‘Nanny State’, and it is far more dangerous than any muscle-bound meathead. This week the Nanny Monster came crashing through the defensive line with a full-on frontal assault, orchestrated by its driving force, Professor Allyson Pollock.
Pollock, a Scottish campaigner on the subject of Rugby Union injuries over many years, has called for a ban on tackling in matches played at British and Irish schools, and has managed to gather a small cohort of 70 doctors and academics to support her view.
These have been reported as being ‘experts’, although their credentials to pass judgement on team sports have not been verified.
Yet, they consider their view to be weighty enough to have sent an open letter to government ministers calling for them to take action.
These academics and doctors advocate a game of touch- rugby instead. Nothing could have demonstrated their arrogance and lack of empathy with those who play contact sports better.
The Nanny Monster wants to kill the game of Rugby Union in the form in which it has being played for almost 150 years, by outlawing one of its fundamental components.
Much of this call for a tackling ban is based on a small survey by Pollock in which she deduced that schools rugby players up to the age of 18/19 had a 28 per cent risk of injury over a season of 15 matches. Whether soft tissue injuries, like pulled muscles, are included is unknown.
What we do know is that the Nanny Monster has got it in for contact sports like Rugby Union, Rugby League, Boxing and Martial Arts.
The reality is that these self-appointed minders in the academic and medical fraternities do not like or approve of human contact sports with a combative element. They feel that such sports appeal to our baser, more atavistic instincts, and have no place in the sanitised modern world they want to create.
WHERE WORLD RUGBY GOT IT RIGHT
It is notable that this activist minority of doctors and academics do not campaign anywhere near as vociferously about injuries in equestrian sports, or motorsports, where risk to life and limb is far greater than in Rugby Union.
When did we last see them call for all young girls to be denied the right to go horse-riding because of the dangers posed to them by cantering on a pony that weighs 400kg, or a 700kg hunter? By comparison Billy Vunipola is a midget-like 130kg (20st 6lbs).
Thankfully, World Rugby (IRB) got their retaliation in early, saying: “Compared with other sports and activities, rugby has a relatively low injury rates despite being known for the physicality of the game. In fact, research has shown that rugby is no riskier for children to play than other sports – there is no difference between reported injury rates in Rugby, Football, Indoor Football and Rugby League at under-12 level.”
WHERE WORLD RUGBY GOT IT WRONG
However, what World Rugby did not address is their own culpability in the law or protocol changes they have introduced over the past two decades, which have turned the elite end of the game into the land of the giants.
Rather than staying true to their charter to promote a game for all shapes and sizes, initiatives such as the outlawing of heeling of bodies on the ground at the ruck, and the scrapping of the Law that the side moving forward in the loose received the put-in, have promoted a more linear Rugby League-style game.
The aerobic element in Rugby Union has been significantly reduced, for forwards in particular, because the big men are no longer required to zig-zag across the pitch to compete at every ruck/maul. Instead, what we have is a much greater incidence of crash-ball running straight at the defender, rather than round him, and front-on tackling.
The result is that while some forwards power directly into contact after taking their allotted place in the line, because only one or two of them are committed to each ruck/maul the amount of anaerobic running has shrunk drastically. Whereas previously most rucks/mauls required the presence of six or seven forwards and the scrum-half, now the only player who has to be at every ruck is the scrum-half.
This explains why international front five forwards are now about 15 to 20kg (two to three stone) heavier than their counterparts at the 1995 World Cup, and with the added bulk they would struggle to sustain the same aerobic work-load.
It also highlights why the growth of the bench to eight replacements has contributed to the super-sizing at elite level, with coaches able to replace an exhausted giant with another giant, who is as fresh as a daisy, for the last 20 minutes of a match. Little wonder they are called ‘impact’ replacements.
If World Rugby want answers to the increased rate of concussion in the professional game, they are staring them in the face, and are largely of their own making.
The answer is to make Rugby Union anaerobic again. World Rugby should endeavour to remove the front five forwards from the defensive/offensive line by giving possession to the side going forward at ruck or maul, and cut the bench to five.
While they are at it, referees should be told to speed up the scrum engagement. At the moment heavyweight front-rowers are using the scrum to get the water-boy coaches on, and to have a breather. No scrum should take longer than a minute to set – as opposed to the two and a half minutes it is frequently now taking – and if props were carrying less bulk they would be able to live with the pace and not jeopardise scrum safety.
It is time for World Rugby to reverse the super-sizing trend, and that way the Nanny Monster can be kept in her cage.