The Rugby Football Union (FRU) has admitted to being concerned about the number of injuries being incurred by players in the sport.

Speaking to Sky News, the FRU’s medical director Dr Simon Kemp said he was ‘pushing’ for injury figures in the sport to be made public in January.

As England faced Australia at Twickenham this weekend, 12 players had already dropped out of the original squad through injuries, raising debate as to whether the level of injuries is an autumn’ spike’ or whether they raise a more worrying issue of safety in the sport.

Dr Kemp told Sky News that he had only seen preliminary injury figures for the 2008-09 season and could not currently say whether there had been an increase on the average of 1,000 injuries recorded per season since injury records for the sport began in 2002. However, the prospect of figures being released publicly has also raised concern within the sport.

‘Professional rugby is a fledgling industry and people other than the medics have had some concerns at how those figures would be interpreted,’ he said.

‘So to date we haven't been able to publicly release them. The group I lead that collects these figures hopes very strongly that we'll be in a position to release them in January.

'I'm confident that the game will behave as responsibly as it's always behaved in these matters,’ Dr Kemp added.

‘You know we're in a position where we are collecting figures – not all sports do that. This isn't about naming and shaming – we're confident that we're addressing the perceived risks within our game responsibly.’

Dr Kemp – the former doctor to the England team – revealed that during the sport’s professional era, the average weight of a player has increased by around 10 kilos and there are approximately 450 collisions in every top-flight game.

Former British & Irish Lions coach Ian McGeechan believes that the current injury level within the England squad might be a blip, however, which might not reflect the whole game.

'It's just that you might be unlucky with that group,’ said Mr McGeechan. ‘Sometimes things like that happen.

‘I think until you've got the right evidence and it's all been collected and collated, it's very difficult to start saying that the game's producing more significant injuries.’

 
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