As a player (soft or otherwise!), where would you say most of the serious impacts come from? On telly we only notice the nasty clash-of-heads stuff i.e. where a player ends up on the floor or with a cut, resulting in slo-mo replays.
Are these the main impact?
Are they being reduced by the stricter laws on tackles-above-the-shoulders?
Is the scrum significant?
When I was playing, mostly as tight-head prop, and up to 1995, scrums, for the two front rows, was almost always a clash of heads when engaging with the opposition. Fists occasionally would arrive from the opposing 2nd row.
In open play, high tackles were generally rare, rucks weren’t pleasant if you were on the ground with 10 bodies on top of you and a player from the other team was aiming a punch or kick at you - it did happen quite a lot.
The fitness, size, speed and power of today’s professional players makes the game a lot more potentially damaging, and there seems to be far more clashing of heads than before.
Serious/fatal injuries (neck, head and back) mainly occured when scrums collapsed. Up to a few years ago the referer directed the forming of the scrum with the tiresome ‘crouch, touch, pause, engage', 'crouch and hold, engage’ mantra. Today it’s a ‘simple’ ‘crouch, bind, set.’
At a scrum today, the scrum half feeds the ball (à la rugby league) almost directly to his 2nd row, by-passing his hooker’s foot completely, making it, IMO, a non contest and a waste of time and effort.
You googled punch drunk dementia.....very leading
