Sunday October 19,2008
By Jim Holden
HOW they laughed in the crowd when Josh Lewsey and Danny Cipriani indulged in a bout of shadow boxing after combining for a thrilling Wasps try in a Heineken Cup match.
A few days earlier Lewsey had knocked out his team-mate with a punch in the face during a training ground flare-up that prompted front page headlines and much critical comment.
The shadow boxing was a light-hearted moment to show the world they were pals again, to prove that what would be considered outrageous and disgraceful in soccer, and criminal assault on a public street, was just a routine and trivial part of macho rugby culture.
It is not hard to believe that Lewsey and Cipriani had swiftly made up because rugby union is different to soccer.
But that doesn?t mean the game is correct to take such incidents lightly. It is not.
Right now, professional rugby union has reached a vital crossroads in the matter of the inherent violence of the game and the number of serious injuries suffered by players, celebrated or obscure.
Certainly, the issue of concussion is not to be taken casually.
Two years ago Australian star Elton Flatley had to retire at the age of 28 due to blurred vision that followed sustained bouts of concussion.
Flatley is one of 40 international rugby players whose careers have ended prematurely due to chronic injury in the past four years.
Last week brought the latest victim, James Forrester, a fine flanker for Gloucester and England, who stopped at the age of 27 because of a dud knee.
Forrester just about held back the tears as he said his farewell speech at the training ground, but could not bear to watch Gloucester?s next match.
The truth, unpalatable though it may be to some in rugby, is that injuries are devastating the game. The facts and figures are alarming, and here?s just a few from an official RFU investigation:
* On average, each rugby union player spends 19 per cent of a calendar year on the treatment table.
* The incidence of injury in international matches is 29 per cent ? which means a one-in-four chance of being crocked while playing for your country.
* There are 92 injuries per team per season in the English Premiership.
Injuries are an occupational hazard, but these figures are damning, far worse than other major sports, and far worse than rugby union should tolerate.
Behind the statistics lies individual heartache. Among the most distressing stories is that of English rugby?s iconic modern player, Jonny Wilkinson, who is currently facing another five months off the field with a shattered knee.
To catalogue the wreckage suffered by Wilkinson?s body over the past five years would take this whole page.
What struck me was the prevalent theory in rugby that his situation has been made worse by the fact he has continued to loyally play for a weakish Newcastle team and is therefore under more pressure in matches and more likely to be hurt.
That theory may well be correct. If so, it is a damaging advert for the sport ? that playing for the wrong team is seriously bad for your health. Maybe the rugby shirt of lesser sides should come with a warning on it like those on
cigarette packets.
To any sane observer the risk in rugby is now unacceptably high.
Insiders are saying it, too. Listen to Eddie Jones, the former coach of Australia, and now director of rugby at Saracens, who gave a bleak warning last week, saying: ?Unless something is done playing careers will get shorter and shorter.?
What to do? Some say give players more protection like the American gridiron footballers. But evidence suggests that could be counter-productive, with players more willing to take big hits because they feel less vulnerable.
Jones says the game needs to be speeded up because increased pace would reduce the number of heavy collisions where many injuries are sustained.
A change in the macho culture of rugby is surely also required. They need a different attitude to the violence of the game, so that when a player is knocked out in training, the incident is not brushed aside with a boys-will-be-boys mentality.
Concussion is not a joke.
I don?t blame either Lewsey or Cipriani for their bout of shadow boxing, immersed as they are in the current mood.
Lewsey is as far from a hooligan type as you will find in sport. I remember very well how, exactly a year ago, he joined a group of sportswriters for a convivial dinner at the famous Brasserie Lipp restaurant on the Boulevard St Germain in Paris a couple of nights before the Rugby World Cup final.
We had to stand outside on the street for 30 minutes because the waiters were deliberately slow in getting a table ready that had been booked. Lewsey, a world champion sportsman, did not complain for a moment.
Within five minutes of eventually sitting down, a waiter had spotted Lewsey among us and suddenly they were fawning all over him asking for autographs and pictures of the man whose try had been crucial in England?s semi-final defeat of France.
Lewsey?s conversation was intelligent and convivial that night, a treasure for the memory.
But I wish he hadn?t been there. I wish he had been back in the England camp that night preparing to play in the World Cup final against South Africa, a match that might have been won with him on the wing.
The bitter fact, however, is that Josh Lewsey had been crocked in the semi-final. He was out injured.
