Spectator Sport

31 October 2009

The bigger they are...

Consider this: barring the intervention of an usually malevolent deity, Bath’s Matt Banahan should be playing on the wing for England during the autumn rugby internationals. Banahan is 22 years old, 6ft 7in tall, and weighs in at 253lbs, or a shade over 18st. Go back 30-odd years and there on the wing for England was Liverpool’s Mike Slemen — this was in the days when Fylde vs Preston Grasshoppers was first up on Rugby Special. Slemen then was 6ft 1in and weighed 12st 4lbs, or pretty much like a reasonably fit bloke you might see on the street today. (If all you met on the street were a race of Matt Banahans, you’d be in Gulliver’s Travels.)

There’s an instructive comparison here with American Football. Last weekend we had the NFL’s wholly fabulous annual Wembley bash. If Banahan had been on the pitch, his size and weight would have made him the equivalent of a linebacker, but his skill sets would have been those of a wide receiver, and the biggest one of these on the winning New England side was Randy Moss, at 6ft 4ins and 210lbs. And people wonder at England’s current injury list.

England coach Martin Johnson has already lost players of the stature — in both senses — of Phil Vickery, Julian White, Delon Armitage, Simon Shaw and Andrew Sheridan. Are we creating a super-species of rugby player who is so strong and so huge and so fast that serious injury starts to become inevitable? American football players are always astounded that rugby uses none of the body armour and protection so essential in their sport. In a fascinating article for the New Yorker recently, the Malcolm Gladwell looks at the possible causal links between NFL players’ long-term brain damage and the constant impact on the head that their sport involves. And top American footballers play barely half the number of games in a season that a top international rugby player will play. In rugby, you can’t help thinking, sooner or later, someone is going to get really seriously hurt.

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