Yeah it’s a difficult area and the first red touched on the problem you’ve described. I honestly don’t know the answer. It’s currently described as mitigation that gives the referee the option of reducing the sanction based on the circumstances of the head impact. I suspect consistency will become a problem.
If there was a way where the gameplay is pushed back towards 1970’s running and avoiding impact but the organisation and fitness levels have nade that super difficult
It may have to become a foul to enter contact with your head down through deliberate action.
Could you imagine if a rule was made, I’d call it the monty python rugby technique.
I think that @Noo_Noo suggestion going back to '70s style would help. To do that 1st thing to do is take away the defending team has holding a player as scum to defender if ball isn’t released (I mean that’s why they do and learn this high tackle technique.
Then define a ‘safe’ tackle as anything below chest height or something like that (also define what chest height is).
I don’t think that is where a lot of these ‘high’ tackles are coming from these days. So many now are being called where the defender fails to avoid the head, but the head is leading the contact like a battering ram. The ‘be tough, ignore concussion’ idea is sort of migrating toward ‘be tough, put your head down’ - there are already elite-level coaches saying they are telling their runners to take advantage of these rule interpretations. I am not sure what can be done about that, but the idea of making the tackler exclusively responsible for tackle height in all circumstances simply isn’t surviving contact with reality. The defender has a significant degree of control over that much of the time.
Over the years there have been a lot of rule changes around what you can do with the ball and your body after a tackle to make it easier to recycle the ball to to encourage more time with the ball in hand and produce, supposedly, more entertaining rugby. The effect of these were that the priorities changed for how ball carriers has to go into contact. These positions battering ram runners take now are only possible because of what they are now allowed to do once there has been contact that they werent in years past So I think a lot of it is an unintended consequence of trying to encourage more entertaining rugby, and maybe if you want back to a ball carrier having to work hard and take contact correctly to ensure you had a successful ruck/maul you eliminate a lot of it.
Can you expand on that please? Rules that spring to mind are removing squeeze ball for example but they all seem to encourage the ball carrier to adopt a low position.
The low position going into the tackle is so as not to get held up and lose the scrum. The ruck is the attacking teams advantage rule wise. Which goes back to my original suggestion.
It is noticeable that palyers are taught just to roll over onto the ground at contact on pick and go. That turn over scenario for the maul is damning.
Traditionally the requirement for taking contact was to always put yourself between the tackler and the ball so that it is on your team’s side, increasing your chances of recycling it. Today, with as long as youre allowed to hold on to it, to roll over it once tackled, and then present it back, it essentially allows you to take contact square on and still be able to recycle the ball.
How much those changes in interpretation of the rules have shifted the balance towards the attacking team at the breakdown have changed the ways the runner can take contact and that, from my view, is what is allowing a lot of these more dangerous collisions.
Got you.
There’s been a definite shift towards the contact area over the years. I’d have put that down to increased fitness and defensive organisation myself making the collision a key aspect of getting over the gain line and increasing momentum, but your point is also valid just showing how difficult it is.
I’ll be honest I don’t know what the answer is. Forcing a below the waste tackle isn’t the answer either. I’ve even tried thinking what 13 a side would look like in my mind.
We saw 14 a side at the weekend and I’m not sure it changed anything much
It was pointed out to me that mathematically it is possible for Wales to slip below Georgia in the WR rankings after the Italy game.
Oh well let’s watch the rugby instead….
This just as bad…is there no Crown Green Bowls on…
I’m in Picardy and the lovely lady we’re staying with tried to get stuck into me this morning about the rugby coz we live in London…
Sorry love…I’m all about the Wallabies (not that I’d like to talk about them right now…)
How is this England any better than under Jones? Getting our collective arses handed to us by the French at Twickenham 
Omg we are getting hammered!!!
That’s the score you expect Italy to be on the end of.
France learn to play cricket the game England have forgotten!
The BREXIT effect! 
By some miracle the stars aligned and I was able to watch both games yesterday.
Wales, better, more together no less helped by a scrum half doing what they’re supposed to do and some healthy rub of the green. Italy could have won it though. Should have maybe with more accuracy, they made so many line breaks, especially out wide . So Gatland still has a mountain to climb. I’m still looking for an identity in this team.
England though. 
Given a proper lesson. Oh to be sitting in studio with Woodward.
I think Borthwick got the selection wrong. Smith is a loose cannon but didn’t offer any game management or control. I also think there’s something not quite right outside him as well.
What is driving England’s selection policy? I struggle to understand why this is the best squad that England can put together. The balance is off.
No posts about the mighty Oirish Grand Slam? The best sporting news of the last couple of months and fully deserved for what has been the strongest Irish team ever. Don’t see them winning the WC but they’ve done us proud.
