Contact events in rugby union and their propensity to cause injury

Colin W Fuller ^1*, John H M Brooks ², Rebecca J Cancea ³, John Hall ³ and Simon PT Kemp ²

¹ Centre for Sports Medicine, United Kingdom
² Rugby Football Union, United Kingdom
³ PGIR Ltd, United Kingdom

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: colin.fuller{at}nottingham.ac.uk.

Accepted 30 April 2007

Abstract

Objective: To determine the incidence of contact events in professional rugby union matches and to assess their propensity to cause injury.

Design: A 2-season (2003/2004 and 2005/2006) prospective cohort design.

Setting: 13 English Premiership rugby union clubs.

Participants: 645 professional rugby union players.

Main outcome measures: Incidence of match contact events (events per game); incidence (injuries per 1000 player-hours and per 1000 contact events), risk (days lost per 1000 player-hours and per 1000 contact events) and diagnosis of injury; referee’s decision.

Risk factors: Player-player contact, position on pitch and period of play.

Results: Tackles (221.0 events/game) and rucks (142.5) were the most common events and mauls (13.6%) and scrums (12.6%) the most penalised. Tackles (701.6 days/1,000 player-hours) were responsible for the greatest loss of time but scrums (213.2 days lost/ 1000 events) and collisions (199.8) presented the highest risk per event.

Conclusions: Tackles were the game event responsible for the highest number of injuries and the greatest loss of time in rugby union because they were by far the most common contact event. Collisions were seventy per cent more likely to result in an injury than a tackle and scrums carried a sixty per cent greater risk of injury than a tackle. The relative propensities for contact events to cause injury were rated as: lineout - very low; ruck - low; maul and tackle - average; collision and scrum - high.

Key Words: Tackle, collision, maul, ruck, scrum

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