Rugby’s card-happy approach to concussion is just not working

Another year, another set of concussion statistics as high as the last. Higher. This year’s, revealed on Tuesday in English rugby’s perennially comprehensive Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project report, is actually the highest recorded since PRISP began in 2002.

Surely at some point the penny will drop that the red-card wild-west rugby embarked upon officially on 3 January 2017, five and a half years ago, but unofficially before even that, is not working – and it never will work. To send players off and ban them for the ugliest (though far from the only) examples of contact with the head is meant to act as a deterrent, but deterrents in the wider world work only when the infringements targeted are the result of deliberate decision-making by the perpetrators in their own good time.

No rugby players these days hit opponents in the head deliberately (because they are liable to be sent off for it apart from anything else), and the time for deliberation over their acts is measured in fractions of a second. Anyone who repeats the mantra that they just need to aim lower is invariably sitting in an armchair with Twitter open.

The idea is to root out upright tackling, but watch any match for five minutes and count the number of upright tacklers. They are everywhere and very often the safer option. So what we are really telling players is: “Don’t tackle upright. Apart from when you should. And if you get it wrong in that split-second you’re off.”

These players we yell at are the very best in the world. If they are still catching each other in the head five and a half years on, maybe, just maybe, it’s because reliably avoiding it is next to impossible. So never expect these red cards – or the debates around them – to end.