Not ignorant at all - World Rugby has not clearly defined it. We advocate for - maximum of 30 matches per season or equivalent minutes for exactly that reason.

Going forward we would welcome the opportunity to engage constructively with World Rugby on the very serious issue of player welfare and hope that they would be open to listening to the external and fully independent expertise which is available to them.

Secondly, it should not have needed a project group to come up with this. In fact it did not - Bill Ribbans of Progressive Rugby made these exact recommendations to World Rugby in 2021, meaning that 4 years ago the game could have been made much safer.

World Rugby Executive Board agrees new player load guidelines | World Rugby World Rugby’s Executive Board has agreed new player load guidelines to cover the elite men’s and women’s game around the world. The new guidelines have been recommended to World Rugby by a project gro...

As a very well informed lobby group, we have 2 important points to make on this initiative. Firstly, these guidelines should be mandatory and should be accompanied by defined limits on the amount of contact in training.

www.world.rugby/news/1017767...

For them to be of value as a diagnostic tool. Which they most definitely aren’t - and weren’t designed for.
This goes for everybody.

While these are absolutely worth a read, and it’s great to see research into women’s health in rugby happening, the mouthguard issue is still being misrepresented. They are valuable from a data collection perspective but the threshold isn’t personalised and is set too high

We’d definitely agree with playing minutes with the caveat that the players still require a minimum 4/5 consecutive weeks rest during the off-season.

There needs to be a mandatory limit on the number of minutes played per season and it needs to be rigorously enforced.

The Times has an article today stating that Itoje played 33 matches last season, as did Ben Earl; Freeman played 34 and Finn Russell played 37; England Rugby’s suggested limit is 30.
This number of matches isn’t sustainable and flies in the face of the claims made about player welfare.

As per the protocol, Ellie did not have an HIA because she was showing concussion symptoms. Technically the stand down period could be longer depending on her recovery.

Playing him today shows just how far we have to go in terms of education and awareness around brain injuries.

Tom suffered a concussion just 5 weeks ago in the 3rd test against the Lions in Sydney. That was his third concussion this season.
He shouldn’t have been on the pitch today - he needs significantly more time to allow his brain to recover.

Scotty Stevenson: Head knocks should not become heart breaks It’s well past time a long term plan was made for players who have suffered for their sport, writes Scotty Stevenson.

Beautiful article about Shane Christie

www.1news.co.nz/2025/08/28/s...

Impacting the rugby tackle: risk factors and mechanisms for concussion and musculoskeletal tackle-related injury - a systematic review and Delphi consensus to inform intervention strategies for risk r... To (1) systematically review the literature to identify which match-related risk factors and mechanisms of rugby tackle events result in musculoskeletal injury, concussion, head injury assessments, an...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40830034/?do...

Hopkinson et al. 2025. SR and Delphi consensus on risk factors and mechanisms for concussion and musculoskeletal injuries in rugby.

Rugby Union blazers in a nutshell

'Unsafe attitudes' to rugby concussion injuries - study More than a third of school rugby players say they would play on in a game if they were concussed, according to a new study.

The research revealed unsafe attitudes to concussion among non-professional rugby players in Ireland, particularly at school level.

From yesterday, from the other site …