How can we make players care about the damage they're doing to rivals?

When a footballer inflicts serious injury on another footballer it’s often said that it’s totally unintended. “Nobody goes out there wanting to cause injury” is the standard line.

If this is true, it is a relatively recent development. Go on YouTube and check out Game 2 of the 1991 State of Origin series, in which Mark Geyer took the field with the clear intention of taking the head off anything in a maroon jersey and stuck to his task for the full 80.

It may have been that he didn’t specifically want to break Paul Hauff’s jaw when he hurled himself elbow-first at the Queensland fullback, but it’s hard to explain his actions in the game as being anything but deliberately aimed at forcing opponents from the field with head injuries.

See also Les Boyd some years earlier. Or check out the 1977 grand final replay, in which Harry Bath’s young Dragons made quite clear their wish for Ray Price to experience the joys of unconsciousness.

But it is true that times have changed. It is true that awareness of the damage that can be done in tackles – particularly in terms of head trauma – is much higher now, and it is true that nowadays you rarely see a sustained campaign of headhunting, as once was fashionable.

But there’s a fine line between ‘I want to injure this guy’ and ‘I don’t want to injure this guy, but if he gets injured, I’m okay with that’, and when it comes to practical outcomes, it’s a line that barely matters.

Nathan Cleary, I’m sure, does not want Dylan Brown to suffer a permanent spinal injury. But Nathan Cleary knows that permanent spinal injury is a very real risk when you pick a man up and plunge him into the ground head-first, and Nathan Cleary knows that if you make the decision to perform a lifting tackle, there’s every chance you’re going to end up doing that.

Knowing these things, Nathan Cleary still decided to lift Dylan Brown up and tip him over. He didn’t want to injure him, he just didn’t care enough about the possibility to avoid the action.

(Photo by Joshua Davis/Getty Images)

Patrick Carrigan, I’m sure, did not want to break Jackson Hastings’s leg. But Patrick Carrigan knows that a hip-drop tackle is an action that carries with it a much higher probability than normal tackling of such injuries. And knowing that, Patrick Carrigan dropped his hip and ripped Hastings back over his leg.

And so it goes on. Dale Finucane didn’t want to smash Stephen Crichton’s head so hard his ear came off. He simply came flying out of the line, fully upright, arms whirling like a battery-operated action figure, caring much more about being seen to crunch an opponent than what damage he might do. Nelson Asofa Solomona didn’t want to break Wayde Egan’s teeth; it just seemed advantageous to him to slam his forearm into Egan’s face – and, you know, sometimes broken teeth just happened.

It’s a cross-code issue, though the specifics of the dangerous tackle problem tend to differ in rugby union. There, players are frequently penalised and sent off for high contact that was completely accidental – except that they didn’t care enough about avoiding that accidental contact to lower themselves, to get their arms, shoulders and head well away from the head of the ball carrier.

And in the aftermath of these incidents, all the focus tends to be on referees, judiciaries and the appropriate penalties. We argue over whether a red card is really fair for an accidental head clash or whether five weeks is enough for a spear tackle or whether NAS has a special dispensation from the NRL to attack heads (and, honestly, if he doesn’t, what the hell is going on?).

What we rarely talk about is why players don’t care what consequences their actions bring.

What chance do we have of convincing footballers to put safety first when lifting tackles are still a common sight in the NRL eight years after Alex McKinnon was left quadriplegic by one?

A lifting tackle isn’t like an accidental high shot. It doesn’t happen because a player missed his calculations of the target area by a few inches or because he was wrongfooted and stuck an arm out in desperation. To hoist a player up and past the horizontal requires a definite intention by the tackler. Yet knowing the horrific potential such an action can have and knowing that they don’t have to do it – that it’s perfectly easy to not do it – tacklers still do it. The momentary advantage of putting a player on his back and slowing his team’s momentum is worth it.

Given that, what chance do we have of convincing players they should take precautions when tackling? How do we convince Nathan Cleary that the chance of putting someone in a wheelchair for life is worth forgoing lifting? How do we convince the entire professional population of two codes that the chance of knocking someone out is worth keeping their tackling technique lower? Or, if looking at other kinds of dangerous tackles, that the chance of breaking a leg or obliterating a knee is worth not smashing into a stationary player’s legs or dropping them over your hip?

I don’t really know the answer. Maybe we need to go back to the days of Les Boyd, who copped a 12-month suspension for breaking Darryl Brohman’s jaw. Maybe only with such supersized penalties will players decide it’s not worth the risk. The risk to their own career, that is – it’s quite clear that risk to other players is no incentive to change behaviour at all. That’s why you heard a lot more after the Penrith-Parramatta game about Nathan Cleary’s regret at letting his own team down than you did about the impact of his tackle on Dylan Brown.

The games of rugby league and union have been cleaned up enormously over the years, as they needed to. We don’t see a lot of cheap shots anymore. The days of a player like Geyer hitting the field with nothing but mayhem in mind are over. But the modern game has brought forth a whole new range of ways to hurt people. The old favourites – the spear tackle and the swinging arm – have been joined by the crusher, the cannonball and the hip-drop.

Innovation in causing pain has boomed, and it seems like we’ve hit the wall in terms of continuing the progress to safer games. Until a way is found for players to care about their opponents’ welfare, that wall may prove to be impenetrable.

Footballers don’t go out there to deliberately injure each other. But if they’re happy to keep accepting injuries as the cost of doing business, the distinction is going to be cold comfort for the injured.