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I recently had a conversation with a good friend and former team-mate of mine that left me contemplating the toll of injury on our sport.
Our conversation centered on the price modern players pay in subjecting their bodies to increasingly unforgiving demands.
As many of my friends enter into the twilight of their professional rugby careers, it seems I’m frequently having these conversations.
“How’s the body?” has become a perfectly routine question.
And as I listen to mates rattle off a long list of injury issues, it strikes me how desensitized we have become to this insidious problem.
Few people get an up-close view of this ugly side of the game. The multiple surgeries, chronic pain, constant medication and the ultimate realization that the human body has human limits.
Unfortunately, the resultant scars run far deeper than might at first appear.
The high turnover rate of players and the number who play whilst injured has a noticeably detrimental affect on rugby’s product.
Of the Wallabies squad of 22 that fronted the All Blacks in October, six players were unavailable for the first round of the Super Rugby season and many headed into the first match under the cloud of injury.
Given the relatively young age of our squad, these are alarming statistics.
The long season, high number of matches, and year-round training often has the games’ best players arriving at season start patched together and compromised from the outset.
Let’s look at a breakdown of the 2012 season.
After a 5-month pre-season, including trial matches, Super teams begin their season in February and will train and play through to the final on August 4th.
In addition to this load, those players picked for the Wallabies squad will take part in a Test season spanning 10 matches between June and October.
These players then have roughly a month of annual leave before reassembling to do it all over again in 2013.
Contrast this with the American NFL, where a season begins in September and ends in early February.
The NFL regular season consists of 16 matches with another 4 played if teams progress to the finals. These matches are condensed into a 5-month block, leaving sufficient time for players to benefit from a proper off-season.
During the NFL off-season, players have the opportunity to fully recover before the next pre-season training commences. The result of this is that players often arrive at each new season in their best ever condition.
In turn, this raises the overall competition standard and enhances the NFL brand.
Rugby seems to be heading in the opposite direction, to a place where quantity attempts to compensate fans for the inevitable drop in quality.
This time last year, Quade Cooper was thrilling us all with his unique fusion of athleticism and skill and Drew Mitchell was scorching down touchlines in career best form.
Both these players hobbled into 2012 and we will have to wait for them to recapture fitness and form.
The players deserve better and so do the fans.
I have no doubt that the exponential nature of scientific progress will lead to an exciting future for professional athletes. Advances in stem cell research will enable players to swap out damaged muscles, tendons and ligaments in much the same way Formula 1 teams replace engine parts between races.
However, until science has caught up with the demands placed on athletes, Rugby and all it’s stakeholders have a duty of care towards the game’s most valuable assets.
The game’s governing bodies must make decisions with the broader picture in mind.
Is the extreme physical toll endured by today’s players undermining the game? How robust is a game that parents no longer want their sons to play?
How sustainable is a model that often has the game’s biggest stars on the sidelines? At what point is there simply too much Rugby on television?
These are all interrelated and complex problems, none of which can be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
Rugby has always been a brutal sport, but have we reached the tipping point?
To do nothing to address the problem of excessive injury is to do something very damaging indeed.