Rugby union orders urgent safety review after cluster of teenage spinal injuries

Rugby Australia has announced an urgent review of safety measures following a series of spinal injuries involving teenagers.

Conor Tweedy with ex-Wallabies Tim Horan and Quade Cooper.

Rugby Australia has announced a review of safety measures ­imposed on schoolboy football following a series of spinal injuries involving teenagers in Queensland’s Great Public Schools ­competition.

The code’s chief executive, Raelene Castle, yesterday said the review would reassess the various measures that have failed to protect four teenage players, each of whom suffered serious neck and spine injuries in recent weeks.

The move comes as Alexander Clark, 15, last night remained in ­intensive care following a tackle during an under-15s match bet­ween his school, St Joseph’s Nudgee College, and visiting Ipswich Grammar on Saturday morning.

Alexander was immobilised on the field and taken to Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital where he successfully underwent surgery to stabilise his neck, ­although the extent of his injuries may not become clear for several weeks. The Courier-Mail reported that Alexander’s father, Paul, was working in PNG when news of the accident reached him and he made the trip to be at his son’s bedside in hospital yesterday.

The accident came two weeks after a scrum collapsed on 16-year-old Conor Tweedy, of St ­Joseph’s College Gregory Terrace, causing dislocation and spinal-cord injury high to his vertebrae. The injury left him weakened and potentially paralysed in his arm and leg muscles, as well as in muscles required for breathing.

Alexander Clark, 15, is in intensive care after being injured during a game on Saturday. Picture: 7 News

Barely one week before that, two Toowoomba Grammar schoolboys suffered spinal injuries, one occurring after he hit the ground during training and ­another during a trial match.

Ms Castle said Rugby Australia had introduced elements to prevent injuries, including grading players by size rather than age, a concussion-card system and coaching techniques for scrummaging. “We’ll be looking to review those processes,” she said.

The safety review was backed by Wallabies great Tim Horan, who called for authorities to “have a look at the schoolboy level”. “One (injury) is too many but we have to do everything to ensure that it doesn’t happen as frequently as the last couple of weeks,’’ he said.

Queensland Rugby Union ­in­terim chief executive David Hanham defended rugby’s safety record, saying that in his 20 years of being involved with rugby in Queensland, such injuries were “rare occurrences”.

Former Wallabies coach Alan Jones, who was a premiership-winning schoolboy coach in Sydney and Brisbane before leading Australia to a famous Grand Slam win in 1984 and Bledisloe Cup success in 1986, said poor coaching and poor refereeing were largely to blame for scrum injuries.

“It is a coaching issue. Players in the second row are bending as they pack so their head is below the level of their thighs. Highly dangerous,” Jones said.

He said that at schoolboy level, let alone at higher levels, referees were not “competent enough” to know the correct technique. “And schoolboys do as they are told. Anything can happen,” Jones said.

However, Horan warned against a ban on pushing in a scrum. “You’ve got to be really careful because you can’t ban pushing. You then leave school and you go into grades and they’re going to push, so you’ve got to teach them how to push a little bit and hold and when a scrum goes down, how to collapse and how it works.”

Horan, who played in two World Cup-winning Wallabies teams, proposed running schoolboys through a two-day course before they were allowed to even begin training as a front-rower. After some training, they would need to pass an extra one-day course before being ­allowed to play a match.

Queensland Rugby interim CEO David Hanham defended rugby’s safety record, saying that in his 20 years of being involved with rugby in Queensland, such injuries were “rare occurrences”. Picture: Glenn Hunt

“Employ a past prop like a Ben Darwin or a Dan Crowley to come into the schools and coach the coaches; and the coaches have to then coach these kids separately before the season starts,” said Horan, an ambassador for charity Spinal Life Australia.

Mr Hanham said he believed the code had worked hard to address safety issues in the game, with special monitoring of concussion and uniform coaching standards. “I think the major thing is that every coach is taught the safe practices through the coach education program, which is a nat­ional curriculum, and with regard to laws, there are variations put in place where tackles can be and can’t be made to try and minimise the risk,’’ he said.

World Rugby chief medical officer Martin Rafferty said the injuries needed “very serious” scrutiny because they represented a “cluster”. “Clusters aren’t just bad luck, they need investigation. And that’s the attitude they (Rugby Australia) are taking as well — they’re not trying to sweep it under the carpet,” he said.

A parent who witnessed part of Saturday’s incident involving Alexander said the boy appeared to be involved in a tackle along with at least two opposition players on the tryline in the corner of the pitch.

“It looked like it was on an area of the pitch that was particularly hard and dry, but all the fields have rock-hard patches on them at the moment,” said the parent, who declined to be named.

The boy lay on the field for more than 20 minutes and then was stretchered off on a golf cart.

The injuries come when rugby union is under pressure from codes such as Australian football and soccer, which are seen as more attractive to parents because of perceived safer playing conditions.

The latest accidents led some parents to take to Facebook asking for more to be done.

“I pray for a speedy recovery but as a mother of three boys that play rugby, I feel something needs to be done,’’ one mother wrote.

“This is the fourth incident in the space of a month. They should make sure kids are playing against kids of appropriate size and make sure they learn to tackle the legs, not the neck. Devastating.”