While Munster and Connacht played out a tight-fought and historical interprovincial match in MacHale Park, Cian Prendergast sustained a head knock that reminds us rugby union still has an unacceptably high injury rate.
The laws of the game are ever-changing in a desperate attempt to slow down said injury rate and especially those that occur in the contact area of scrums, mauls, tackles and in particular the breakdown.
The ruck is one of the areas where there is a huge risk of injury and career-threatening incidents. It was a ruck action that (legally) caused the end of my career, so I have a small bit of skin in the game when it comes to the fear of what the breakdown might cause.
Before discussing the unfortunate aspects of Alex Nankivell's red card, which led to Prendergast's injury, I want to be very clear that Connacht forward's health, and the health and safety of the players, is the most important aspect of the incident.
It was positive to see Prendergast giving a thumbs up, albeit from the secured position of a paramedics stretcher. One can only assume that he has undergone a concussion assessment and been brought through the necessary return-to-play protocols to safely guide him back to contact sport.
I don’t want to get into the discussion surrounding the suitability of the seven or 12-day return-to-play protocol at professional level, and I certainly don’t want to speculate on the health of an injured player when I’m under-qualified to do so on both of those matters.
However, where I want to place my attention is around the incident itself. My sympathy lies with Prendergast, but I also have sympathy for Nankivell in what could have been a rugby incident had he shown more of his right arm in an attempt to make a more accurate clear-out action.
He arrived at the ruck with the right amount of force to do the job expected of him without being reckless.
He also arrived at an appropriate height when he first saw the picture that Prendergast presented to him.
He did, however, leave a trailing arm, which wasn’t in a position to wrap around the body of the Connacht player.
Had he wrapped that arm, he may well have made a similar contact with Prendergast and you’d expect the collision to be treated with some mitigation by the referee due to it being a legal action.
The ruck in rugby union is now set up in a way that you can turn the ball over by hinging at your hips and putting your head below the level of your hips, while the opposition players are being coached and refereed in a way that asks them to drop their height and go lower.
This means both the poacher and the arriving attacker will be looking to place a head and an opposition shoulder in a similar area of the ruck.
We see it many times over, and the onus is put on the arriving attacker to make sure they don’t land their shoulder on the head of the opponent. In most cases, I would agree with the harsher refereeing outcome for the safety of players and for the longevity and sustainability of the game.
However, the more I watched the red card incident, the more I thought that the game itself is doomed to failure if we continue to ask players to go low in contacts while allowing the poaching player to hinge over the top of the ruck.
What's legal, what's not? The Against The Head panel are unhappy with the lack of consistency regarding the contentious decisions during the Connacht clash with Munster. #rterugby pic.twitter.com/RmFMNHnIvf
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) March 31, 2025
We scrutinise the rucking player and debate the entry, the height, the force etc. What would happen if we stopped allowing the jackal turnover?
We can still encourage turnovers by continuing to counter ruck in a semi-upright position like that of a tackler. If the arriving players on both teams were aiming to be in a tackle position or grapple as opposed to a race to the lowest height, then we might avoid a lot of these collisions altogether.
I’m not one for radical change, and I’d hate to see the art of a jackal player or poacher being removed from the game. However, when you step back objectively it seems like madness to ask players to take up that position for the sake of a turnover when there are alternative options.
There have been many positive changes to the laws of rugby around the breakdown. The arriving force is now more controlled and the act of twisting or performing a 'croc roll’ are now deemed a dangerous offence.
We saw that in the same game at the weekend when Connacht had their last try chalked off due to Bundee Aki’s roll on Gavin Coombes. We’ve seen many injuries from it before and it was clear that Coombes was in a vulnerable position. It was the right call even though a great attacking try was ruled out.
The croc roll came into the game because of the height of the poacher as well. There was no way to beat their height so you had to find a way to twist them out of the ruck in a way that they had to give up or be forced into a vulnerable position.
You now can’t remove a poaching player with force because it is rightly deemed too dangerous due to the position they’re in, and you can’t remove them by rolling them.
In effect, you can’t really remove them safely at all, unless you beat them into that position which means everyone is fighting to put their heads lower and in harm’s way.
Are we continuously finding ways to make the jackal safer instead of just removing the jackal itself?
Would the ruck be a lot safer as a result or will teams find another way that is as dangerous?
I understand that with every action there is a reaction, and with every law change you are asking for ingenuity in terms of finding new ways to get the same outcome. The law makers have to be very careful that they don’t spark another issue.
However, when it comes to the jackal itself, you would arguably remove one of the more detrimental positions for a player to be in. If you allow them to take up that position, competitive players will always put themselves in harm’s way.
Maybe there’s an alternative. Maybe we shouldn’t let them into that position in the first place.
Watch Leinster v Harlequins in the Champions Cup on Saturday from 2.15pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app.
Listen to live commentary of La Rochelle v Munster (5.30pm) and updates from Leinster v Harlequins (3pm) in the Champions Cup on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1.
