“RUGBY IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN EVER”

AT THE highest levels, rugby union is a battleground.

Yes, time for George Orwell’s famous description of the Olympics and international sport as “war minus the shooting” to be rammed into the text. Invariably someone is escorted from the field within the first five minutes, a few stitches, a broken nose. The team doctor leads them off, blood drenching the bandage, nose held, head back. So it begins.

The HIA (head injury assessment) has become as much a part of the game as scrums and lineouts. Players slump with regularity as the game goes on. Archipelagos of prone players and kneeling medics. Giants thunder around them. Quite something, the way the sport plays through others’ pain.

Rugby, if anything, appears too macho. There are occasions when the medical team have a hold on the neck of an inert player. Ninety-nine out of 100 occasions, thank the rugby gods, these are purely precautionary. But hey, a forward is lying inert and a dozen men