Whenever a fresh study on the dangers of concussion in sport hits the headlines it reminds me of the ominous prophecy from Malcolm Gladwell: that playing American football will one day become akin to joining the army. “We will disclose the risks and dare people to play,” he warned in 2013. “That’s what the army does. That’s what football is going to become.” In this future mushrooming evidence of traumatic brain injuries will turn the National Football League into a “ghettoised sport” – Gladwell’s words – avoided by the middle classes but still grimly embraced by the poor and desperate.

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That logic could easily extend to other sports, including both codes of rugby, boxing, mixed martial arts and, yes, even football. Increasingly we are aware that it is not only crushing hits that scramble the brain but repetitive sub-concussive blows, too. Then there are the dangers of playing on with concussion. One study in the academic journal Pediatrics, published last month, followed 69 high-school athletes who sustained head injuries in football, ice hockey, soccer and volleyball and found that those who stayed on the field took twice as long to recover (44 days compared with 22 days).

Yet the conference of the World Rugby Science Network – a global body of researchers interested in both codes – in Bath this month suggested that in rugby union’s case significant steps are being made in tackling concussion and more could be on their way.

The starting point was acceptance. As the Rugby Football Union’s Matthew Cross pointed out, since the 2009-10 season there has been a year‑on‑year rise in the reported incidents of concussion in the Premiership and head injuries are now the most common injury in the league. Given players have not got taller or heavier in the past six or seven years, that is probably down to improved reporting rather than the game getting more dangerous.

Cross then outlined the RFU’s strategy to identify better and then to manage concussions when they happen. As anyone who has watched the Premiership this season will know, all teams now have a designated person to watch matches on an iPad to look out for potential head injuries. The 10-minute window for a player to have a Head Impact Assessment (HIA) is now 13 minutes so doctors can also carry out the King‑Devick Test, where players are asked to read a series of numbers as accurately as possible and their score is compared with their baseline.

However, potentially the most interesting findings have come from a research project looking at a database of 1,516 professional matches between 2013 and 2015, which involved 611 HIAs. As the sports scientist Ross Tucker explained at the conference, this allowed World Rugby to code where each head injury occurred – whether it was in a tackle, scrum, maul and so on – and how it had come about. Tackles, unsurprisingly, topped the list, so they started diving deeper. How many players were involved in tackles where head injuries occurred? What direction or angles did the tackle come from? What were the speed of the players and their body positions? And how did all this change the risk of serious injury?

Among the interesting findings were that 76% of head injuries happen in the tackle and about three quarters of those happen to the tackler. Smother tackles, which are often thought to be particularly dangerous, turn out not to be. A tackler bent at the waist, or diving, has a lower risk of picking up a head injury than one who is upright. And the most dangerous tackle of all – by far – is when both players are upright because it increases the risk of one head hitting another or smashing into a shoulder pad.

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But it was what Tucker said next that was most interesting. These findings had been presented to senior figures in World Rugby, as well as elite coaches and referees, and they all agreed that there needed to be “zero tolerance” on head injuries in the sport and ways found to get the tackler lower. The research had led to a range of proposals, which are expected to be discussed shortly.

Tucker also revealed that he wanted to make this head injury database open-sourced and be as open and collaborative as possible. Meanwhile Cross highlighted another forthcoming brain study investigating the potential effects of playing rugby union and concussion on the long-term health of elite players, which will involve physical and cognitive assessments as well as blood and urine testing to look at potential biomarkers.

Of course rugby will remain a dangerous game. The Wales captain, Sam Warbuton, illustrated that particularly vividly when I spoke to him about the breakdown a couple of years ago. As he put it, it is “a pretty ugly place when you’ve got three 18-stoners flying in, trying to take your head off. Sometimes I’m struggling to shampoo my head the next day because my head is hurting so bad.”

Rugby remains a tough game with obvious risks. But when it comes to concussion significant progress has been made in the five years since the 2011 Rugby World Cup, when 56% of players who were concussed stayed on the field and were diagnosed only afterwards. As Tucker points out, the use of data has built a compelling case for further change – and, who knows, may help rugby union avoid Gladwell’s grim vision of the future.