NZ in step with World Rugby on high tackles

Had World Rugby’s proposal to lower the tackle height – which has arrived years too late – been embedded by 2022, Portia Woodman might be able to remember the World Cup final.

Instead, Woodman was knocked out in exactly the sort of tackle that World Rugby wants to eradicate from the game. England winger Lydia Thompson, upright as a pole, came across to tackle Woodman and the pair’s heads inevitably collided at pace. Sickening and avoidable.

Retain the image of a prone Woodman on the Eden Park turf in your head when you come across the inevitable howls of complaint from those who say lowering the tackle height will turn the game soft.

The truth is it’s never been more brutal, turning off parents at the amateur level and robbing the game of continuity at the elite level, the very quality that allows New Zealand rugby to be so compelling when it is played at its best.

If this rule is implemented well it will unshackle the Jordie Barretts and Ruahei Demants, the players who can take the ball to the line and produce an offload without fear of a tackler taking off their heads.

New Zealand Rugby knows which way the wind is blowing.

Last year it introduced a trial to reduce the tackle height in the community game to below the sternum, and it did so without outrage because of an open communications strategy that made the RFU’s own tackle-reduction announcement look amateurish.

NZ Rugby offered up community game boss Steve Lancaster to explain the thinking, and he came armed with a vision of a game that offered greater safety to its participants and the promise of a better spectacle.

Just as importantly, Lancaster came with some nuance in his explanation – of course tacklers who are trying to stop a pick and go close to the line would be offered some leeway. And, the second tackler would be governed by the existing tackle height laws (shoulder line).

He did not envisage a game suddenly free of risk or grey areas from referees, but he did envisage one in which, over time, the tacklers would be conditioned to lowering their sights. Aim for the shoulder and you’ll inevitably hit the head. Aim for the

sternum and even if you get it wrong the damage won’t be as severe.

The breakdown was next on his list in terms of player safety. He knew the game had to change.

And don’t believe for a second that players can’t be coached to change. Everyone in New Zealand rugby knew that former Otago and Highlanders midfielder Sio Tomkinson was a repeat offender with high tackles.

But, when it finally dawned on him that he was becoming a liability, he managed to

drop his tackle height significantly. By the end of his Highlanders career he was still their hardest hitter, but legal. If a player can’t drop their tackle height in six months, it’s because their coaches aren’t good enough.

World Rugby’s changes aren’t going to happen overnight. You would imagine that New Zealand’s trial is going to be watched with great interest.

New Zealanders should hope it is a success. It may be the start of the country reclaiming its mantle as a rugby innovator.