Rugby warm-ups lead to injury cool-offs

At a talk at which I was present Kobus Wiese once argued that rugby is not a contact sport. He was quite emphatic. "Football is a contact sport," he argued, "so too is hockey, and even basketball at times.

"Rugby is a collision sport," he urged. And to illustrate his point he had us picture the horrific collision, crunching of bones, bruising of muscle, and snapping of tendons involved in a coming together of himself and Jonah Lomu. His point was definitely well argued.

All of us present at his talk could picture in our minds the impact of such a collision.

The Lomu/Wiese collision would be the rugby equivalent of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object but any of us who has ever played the game will know that Kobus is right.

As a poor but enthusiastic scrumhalf for the Bryanston High under-14, 15 and 16 teams I suffered numerous grazes, bashed knees, concussion and two broken collarbones, and I was one of the lucky ones. Being small and fairly nippy I was hard to catch or pin down.

Since we all understand now that at its best, rugby is a contact sport and at its worst a war, it still puzzles me why our coaches and trainers insist on playing warm-up games before the major competitions.

These warm-up/trial matches seem to serve very little purpose except to cripple key players at exactly the wrong time.

Boxers would not dream of fighting a full 15-round bout without headgear and protective clothing a few days before their big fight. Marathon runners know that it is athletic suicide to race a marathon in order to test whether or not you are ready to race a marathon.

Even pondering the idea is stupid and yet rugby players play warm-up games against tough opposition just before the real game.

So we see that as a result of a warm-up match between the Cats and the Lions, one of South Africa's key players, Werner "Smiley" Swanepoel, is now out for several weeks with a fractured cheekbone. Who else will be injured in these opening weeks of the game so many of us love so much? Of course, there is a certain balance because some of our other Super 12 teams have also suffered injury blows.

Stormers lock Hottie Louw wrenched his neck in their warm-up game against Western Province. Blue Bulls wing Gavin Passens is out for most of the season with torn knee ligaments. He joins team-mates Jaco van der Westhuyzen, Dries Scholtz and Schutte Bekker on the casualty list.

How many more important players will be crippled before key matches?

As unsporting as this sounds, one can only hope that the Australian and New Zealand Super 12 teams are also having lots of warm-up matches, after which several of their key players will spend weeks cooling off while their injuries heal.

Perhaps the rugby coaches of the world see these games as something of a lottery. If players are injured it opens the way for others to fill their place. So Swanepoel's sadness is Chad Alcock's joy.

With rugby's talent pool as deep as it is the game can afford some casualties, but eventually some players whose absence will be sorely felt will be injured.

There has to be a better way to test players' readiness and fitness than to make them play their warm-up matches. At the risk of being ridiculed, perhaps they should wear grid iron protective clothing, or perhaps they should be playing games of touch rugby.

It sounds ridiculous but at the moment players, fans and the game itself are all suffering because the concept of a full-strength team is just a complete myth.

The great legendary Blackadder (not the All Black captain), Rowan Atkinson, suggests to his general at one stage that a lot of time and energy would be saved by the British and the German if each side contesting World War I simply shot 10 000 of their own men each day.

Perhaps it would save a lot of time and painful collisions if practice matches were banned and each one of the Super 12 teams was forced to drop two key players each month.