Two great rugby reads from Y Lolfa

Rugby hit the headlines before Christmas for all the wrong reasons. The sport saw high-profile ex-international players raise a lawsuit against World Rugby for creating rugby union‘s unacceptable injuries crisis. Nine former rugby players have now joined the legal action, with World Rugby being accused of negligence over head injuries. A further 130 former players are expressing an interest in the claim.

With Rugby Union facing a landmark lawsuit, Ross Reyburn’s new book, Saving Rugby Union – The price of professionalism provides a damning account of how it has been misguidedly transformed into a sport viewed by many as unnecessarily dangerous.

Marking the 25^th anniversary of the historic decision to pay players, made in Paris in 1995, the book vividly details how well-intentioned but misguided law changes were introduced in order to try and match the greater flow of rival sport rugby league – and how they have hugely backfired.

The result is that World Rugby, the former International Rugby Board, has turned the game into a Darwinian perversity where power all too often outweighs skill and an unacceptable injuries crisis now threatens the game’s future at amateur level. Bill Sweeney, chief executive of the RFU, also sees the challenge as a serious threat to the sport’s reputation.

“World Rugby chairman Sir Bill Beaumont should either return rugby union to its heritage as a 15-man sport, or resign,” says Ross Reyburn.

“The current negligence claim by former players led by England World Cup winner Steve Thompson shows the sad results to the law changes made since 1995. They have led to a huge increase in the number of concussion incidents during matches, and the serious link to dementia. The law should have been reversed long ago.”

“Unbelievably World Rugby’s leaders have repeatedly denied there is an injuries crisis and have even claimed that the game is ‘safer than ever’ and that ‘player welfare’ is the main priority.”

Reyburn quotes many leading media rugby figures and medics who have called – in vain – to end rugby’s emergence as a 23-man sport enabling coaches to heighten the collision count by replacing more than half their side during a game, with fresh impact players crashing into tired opponents. 

“Top rugby players reportedly average a quarter of their careers injured,” says Reyburn. “Or in the case of the recently retired 27-year old Jack Clifford, the gifted back row forward capped 10 times by England, he endured four out of his eight years as a professional rugby player injured, unable to play the game.”

“This is a particularly important book as it is a potential bible for change. It lists common-sense solutions that could end rugby union’s injury crisis,” said Y Lolfa’s Head of Publishing, Lefi Gruffudd.

Another of Y Lolfa’s books which opens discussion, albeit a more light-hearted one is Luke Upton’s Hard Men of Rugby. The book celebrates 20 of the toughest men in the game from the First World War to the present day. Most are from a time before the availability of slow-motion replays and certainly trial by social media. Largely free from the confines of the commitments the modern professional game demands, some of their actions are almost hard to believe – both on and off the pitch!

Hard Men of Rugby however also touches upon the more serious discussion of the safety of modern rugby. In his Foreword to the book, Nigel Owens writes that a question that he is often asked is his opinion on whether the game has ‘gone soft’. In his response, Nigel asks whether the ‘good old days’ of the 1970s and 1980s are the golden days of rugby if all the stories are of players being injured at the bottom of the rucks, punched, stamped and headbutted. He adds:

“Call me old-fashioned, but that’s not the kind of game I would want to be part of and just because that stuff has been rooted out does not mean rugby is soft.”

“The pace of the game has picked up dramatically since I first picked up my whistle and so has the intensity and the time the ball is in play for. The hits today are thunderous, put in by blokes who are built like tanks. Yet I regularly see people picking themselves up off the floor and resuming play after being smashed square-on. The impact of the collisions can be tremendous and the courage shown in every game never ceases to amaze.”

With stories of a Lions tourist springing a convict from captivity, a World Cup-winner playing on after tearing his scrotum and a player having his career ended after assaulting a fan in the stands during a game, this lively, engaging and highly readable book brings some of rugby’s craziest moments, biggest characters, and most remarkable stories to life.

Saving Rugby Union by Ross Reyburn and Hard Men of Rugby by Luke Upton are both published by Y Lolfa and are available now for £9.99 each.