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Rugby Guilty Of Cruelty To Players
21/02/2007 06:43 PM
Marc Hinton
The more I think about it, the more I can't shake the belief that professional rugby is on a collision course with itself. And if something's not done soon to avert this passage of destruction, the fallout could be explosive.
Alarmist? I don't believe so. Overly dramatic? Nope. Stark flaming reality, the way I see it.
I'm talking, of course, about this never-ending rugby season of ours that's come under the microscope as a result of Graham Henry's controversial conditioning programme for his 22 hand-picked All Blacks.
The feedback from the players on Henry's specially tailored training regime has been all positive. These men -- men who love nothing more than the gladiatorial combat of top-level rugby, it should be added -- are waxing lyrical about the benefits of a programme that's allowed them to do three key things.
First, it's given them a sustained break from competitive rugby and all the mental challenges that go toward building and peaking for a weekend match, then dealing with the emotional fallout from the result, having a day to shake off the effects and then getting right back on the conveyor belt to do it all again.
It cannot be underplayed how taxing this weekly routine is on a professional rugby player, especially in a competition as short, intense and with such a high percentage of failure as the Super 14 (by definition, 10 out of 14 sides in this event will consider themselves having fallen short of their ambition, because they did not make the playoffs).
Also, it's allowed them an adequate period to physically prepare themselves for the unique demands of a rugby season. Again, it cannot be emphasised enough how important this period is, when muscles are built, fitness levels established, skills attended to away from the demands of a weekly match.
And, finally, it's allowed these guys a reasonable sort of off-season (though still nowhere near what it needs to be) and a normal sort of routine (most are on Monday-Friday programmes, with weekends off to spend with family and friends) that allows them to have the mental downtime that you simply don't get in the competitive environment.
And to a man they've reported back glowingly in terms of the benefits they're feeling, the positive spinoffs they're experiencing. Hard rugby men like Jerry Collins and Richie McCaw looked me in the eye and declared they'd seen the light. Sure, they'd love to be out there playing for their Super 14 franchises right now, but they know that if they're to be at their very, very best in October in France, that they simply cannot be trying to find winning edges at the beginning of February.
First things first. The rugby season, both down under and up north, is quite simply too long. And not just by a few weeks here or there. It's way, way too long. Too long like Stephen Fleming and Craig McMillan are feeling too vindicated at the moment.
In fact, I'll go even further. We're destroying our professional rugby players with the workload we're asking them to shoulder. It's bizarre. It's stupid. And it's downright cruel.
Competition Overload
Just consider the rugby year as it stands now. The Super 14 runs from February to May, a seven-test window then pops up from June to August, the Air NZ Cup competition chimes in from July to October, and, this year, a World Cup comes around in September and October. There's also New Zealand's age-group sides, the Junior All Blacks and Maori to factor in.
Some players will be asked to play in three of these four "competitions". An odd exception might even pop his nose up in all four. Most years our leading players start their season in January and don't finish it until the end of November. It's just ludicrous.
Also you need to factor in training camps, pre-season matches and tailored fitness regimes. Now recognise that some of these same players will have up to three different sets of coaches to deal with. That's up to a dozen different voices hammering away at them, giving their views on how best they can operate as rugby players.
Now, before we get the violins out, we need a bit of reality here. What is there to compare to the rugby season? Well, really only two sports that I believe you can draw parallels with.
One is rugby league, which offers its players -- for the most part -- an off-season of two to three months. Certainly there's really only one competition for them to worry about, in the form of the NRL's gruelling March-to-September club competition. There's usually some internationals or other tagged on at the end, but nothing too taxing as, let's face it, this is rugby league we're talking here.
But even this sport, I believe, has it wrong. Throwing internationals on the end of a season as long as the NRL's is too taxing for players to handle. With a few notable exceptions, the game's test component lacks quality and intensity.
For the real blueprint for a professional full-contact sport you need look no further, I reckon, than the the USA's National Football League which, after all, has been doing this thing a lot longer than rugby or even league.
In the NFL teams play a 16-game regular season that lasts 17 weeks between early September and the end of December. Following that there's a four-round post-season stretched over five weeks, culminating in the Super Bowl. And that's it folks.
The tired argument you hear with rugby is that broadcasters need product to fill their schedules. Rubbish. The NFL generates the biggest TV revenue of any of the major American sports, and that's because the scarcity of matches actually increases demand. People savour the NFL when it rolls around and every game means something. And sponsors, advertisers and TV audiences fall over themselves to get on board.
(Besides, I hasten too add, filling TV programming is no excuse for putting your players' health at risk.)
But more than this the NFL realises that it can only ask its participants to bash and crash into each other for so many weeks of a year. And that when it's all over they must be allowed to rest, recover and then rebuild their battered bodies.
It's a lesson rugby -- and its fractured international community -- must take on board. And fast. What it's doing now to its top professional players borders on the inhumane.
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What do you guys think?