World Rugby’s new directives for punishing high tackles come into effect this weekend, but in truth they have left it up to coaches and players to figure out for themselves how to adapt

What is this new law change?

To call it a law change is the first disingenuous step from World Rugby. This is actually a ramping up of punishment for an existing offence. The threshold for a high tackle remains the line of the shoulders. World Rugby has instituted two new categories for a high tackle – “reckless” and “accidental” – together with rhetoric that tries to define each. But a high tackle remains a high tackle, and both the reckless and accidental manifestations have long been penalised.

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What has changed then?

Mainly the severity of the punishment for reckless tackles, whose minimum sanction is a yellow card and maximum a red, fortified with increases in the accompanying bans. The “accidental tackle” (was there ever a more ridiculous phrase?) has a minimum sanction of a penalty and, tellingly, no maximum. To advise red cards for accidents would be a step too far, even for World Rugby, but you can be sure referees will feel pressure to award them.

But World Rugby have been preaching zero tolerance on this for a while, haven’t they?

Yes.

So, it’s not really a change at all?

You’ve got a point there. The game is already creaking under the weight of red and yellow cards. This is just the institution into the law book of the several directives World Rugby has issued recently on the question of high tackles, the latest in November. Hopefully, there will be little further effect when it all kicks off this weekend. Realistically, though, the scrutiny on players and referees will be more intense than ever.

Surely it will also mean a lowering of the target area for the tackler?

That is true. And if we had a stronger governing body it would institute the law directly by lowering the threshold for a high tackle to somewhere safe on the body, such as below chest height, not leave it up to the players and coaches to work that out for themselves in the middle of a season.

Why are they doing this now?

World Rugby recently announced plans to trial a genuine law change like that, but it will take time. Meanwhile, concussion is a huge issue, as is the image of a sport whose shuddering collisions are replayed in ever greater detail by more and more high-definition cameras. Collision sports such as rugby are on the brink of a crisis, their gladiatorial nature jarring against the frame-by-frame, litigious culture we live in. World Rugby’s solution for now is to demand ever-harsher sanctions, thus forcing players and coaches into those very same changes that apparently need to be trialled at junior level before they are effected at senior.

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Why do they need to be trialled?

To work through any side-effects. For example, rugby is a mauling game and that involves low-impact contact with the upper body, which is safe, even if it would fall foul of a lower threshold for a high tackle. Similarly, when a prop forward is charging at the try line with his head a few inches off the ground, there is no way to stop him other than by meeting him head on.

What will that mean under the new regime?

We are about to find out. One of the telling phrases in World Rugby’s release is that its new sanctions “effectively” lower the acceptable height of the tackle. In other words, World Rugby is not actually doing it, because that sort of change requires a trial, but in effect it is forcing players and coaches to make the changes anyway. And if they get it even slightly wrong there will be severe repercussions.