14 yo girl broken bones after playing rugby against a 14 yo boy.

[LastRoloIsMine]

This happened this week.

A friend of my DDs met up with their mixed sex friendship group to play rugby.

They have done this since primary school and its the same group of friends. Its not a match and none of them play as a hobby they just mess around but do tackle each other.

They haven't done this in over a year due to covid ( and probably shouldn't have done it yesterday as restrictions are still in place ) but decided to resume their game from last year. As I said they have done this for years and the only injuries have been grazed knees and a few bruises.

Sadly one girl was tackled by one of the boys and it resulted in her foot being broken in 4 places!
The boy was distraught. He's a lovely lad and not aggressive in any way. My DD told me that he has grown in the last year, he's much taller and stronger than he used to be but still a "skinny" lad. He kept saying he didn't mean to tackle her so hard, he didn't realise how strong he was.
DD said he knocked her clean off her feet, he wasn't running fast it is just a friendly game but the injured girl said it was like running in to a wall.
She recovering at home and doesn't blame the young lad at all as it was an accident.

This just highlights to me the dangers of mixed sex contact sport. These kids don't train, are not professionals and we're only playing but the boys strength caused injury can you imagine what a professional or semi professional males could do to females when tackling?

I worry for the safety of female rugby players and fear it will take a woman to die or have life changing injuries for the governing bodies see sense.

@Creepygnochi right so "ice mum" means parent of a child who does figure skating.

Despite your experience of watching several children a month break their feet, you were not there, you have no idea what was broken or how. Certainly the children involved seem to think it was related to the size/weight/strength of the boy involved. It is not possible for you to decisively state otherwise.

Regardless, it is accepted by the various rugby authorities that at this age, boys and girls should not be playing or training together. That is for very valid reasons.

It would have been a stress break from being forced into a sudden unnatural angle, hence the multiple fractures

So you don't think the force of the tackle had any relevance at all? I find that hard to believe. I can see your point and I don't have the expertise/authority to disagree with you but a male barrelling into you as opposed to a lighter/less strong female has to have an impact in terms of the damage done surely?

"So yeah, think it's fair to say that I know more about foot injuries than any rugby player, ever."

Seriously?

So yeah, think it's fair to say you're making yourself sound like a pompous twat than any rugby player, ever.

Have you heard yourself? "Ice sports mum"

@LastRoloIsMine I hope your DD's friend is OK. I wouldn't be happy with my DDs doing this with their mates, for the very reasons I am opposed to men playing for women's rugby teams eg risk of injury and safety. I also wouldn't want my DSs playing with a mixed sex group (they wouldn't these days anyway as they understand the risks but there is sometimes a time period when DSs grow so quickly and don't appreciate how much bigger they are)

[quote AssassinatedBeauty]@Creepygnochi right so "ice mum" means parent of a child who does figure skating.

Despite your experience of watching several children a month break their feet, you were not there, you have no idea what was broken or how. Certainly the children involved seem to think it was related to the size/weight/strength of the boy involved. It is not possible for you to decisively state otherwise.

Regardless, it is accepted by the various rugby authorities that at this age, boys and girls should not be playing or training together. That is for very valid reasons. [/quote]
Yes, it is. You can't break a foot from pressure alone, unless it is applied directly to the foot. The knees would give out first, they are the pressure pads of the body. Unless he cannonballed her foot, the break would have been caused by getting stuck at an awkward angle past the point of natural motion. That's just basic physics and anatomy.

This thread is bonkers.

So.... what is the effect of landing position of coming into contact, in anyway, with a body moving faster and more powerfully than another female of the same age? It doesn’t have to be a tackle, just a very fast moving body destabilizing someone.

PatriachyChickenChampion2020

They won't be playing in mixed teams again after this. Very much a lesson learnt.

@LastRoloIsMine

I think your logic is skewed in this

My logic is they have always played this game but in the last 16 months the boy has grown bigger and stronger and he didn't realise it, none of them did. They had only played 5 minutes this was his first tackle.

While I realise this injury could have been caused by any of the male or female players it was the girls shock at how much stronger the boy was than a year ago. She's a tall athletic girl and last year she overpowered all of her friends boys included. She's very sporty and by no means delicate.

Maybe this is really the more important point - that there starts to be a significant noticeable gulf that is obvious to players once puberty sets in.

And it's surprising to girls (and maybe boys too) because the way society has tried to tackle equality is to insist that there are no differences of this kind.

@LastRoloIsMine

PatriachyChickenChampion2020

They won't be playing in mixed teams again after this. Very much a lesson learnt.

Touch rugby is an option, it's lots of fun and good for mixed sex or age groups.

Yes of course you can break bones from landing badly in a tackle (which is how my daughter did it). I have absolutely no doubt though, that had she been tackled by a boy of the same age, it would have meant the difference between the break being non displaced, or more serious and requiring pins/multiple ops.
Just because a sport is inherrently dangerous, it doesn't need to be made moreso by allowing males to play against females.

@Viviennemary

I don't think girls should play rugby.

I'll let my county playing DD know that! She's 5'3, 110lbs and never sustained a serious injury.

OP, there are ongoing issues about trans-female players being able to join female teams and the danger this presents but your scenario is totally different- mates mucking about in the park and an accident.

It's about size and power with rugby not gender.
A boy of the same build would of got the same injury. Rugby by the nature of the game is rough and aggressive

@rwalker

It's about size and power with rugby not gender. A boy of the same build would of got the same injury. Rugby by the nature of the game is rough and aggressive

Exactly.

If you're going to play a full contact sport, you need to accept that injury is a very high possibility.

For what it's worth, I don't think girls and boys should be playing contact sports against each other (tbh, I don't think girls should be playing full contact sports at all because of how much more susceptible they are to knee and hip injuries), but this ain't it. She very realistically could have sustained that injury playing against the smallest girl in school because she doesn't know how to fall and clearly doesn't have very strong/flexible feet (I'm willing to bet she's no ballerina). It's certainly not the boy's fault.

@rwalker

It's about size and power with rugby not gender. A boy of the same build would of got the same injury. Rugby by the nature of the game is rough and aggressive

Yes - gender is completely irrelevant when it comes to sports. Sex is a whole other matter, though.

Whilst a mismatch of body weight is a concern, trust me, plenty plenty of all biological female rugby games end in injury. The fact it was mixed sex is not necessarily the reason

I don't say they should be banned from playing. But no use handwringing about broken legs and broken noses.

K

The real key difference is that in my sport 20 percent of all athletes retire as a direct result of a foot injury, which is to be expected really when you consider the sport is essentially encasing the foot in a leather encrusted cast with a four inch freshly sharpened blade attached to the bottom that you then use to move 50mph on the worlds most slippery surface, throw yourself up into the air as high as you can to complete 4 full body rotations in under a second, before landing on said slippery surface on a single foot at the force of a 1000lbs.

That sounds terrifying, @Creepygnochi. Landing in from a height, in that way, in that footwear, I'm not surprised there are foot injuries.

I'm not an expert of any kind, but can you explain why exactly the same has to be true of a girl in flat boots knocked flying when running in a game of rugby?

Why are so many posters invested in denying the possibility that this girls' foot was broken because she was playing with a boy who is bigger and stronger? What purpose could that serve 🤔

Touch rugby is an option, it's lots of fun and good for mixed sex or age groups.

I played mixed tag rugby for a while. The male/female imbalance in speed and power is huge. It's supposed to be non-contact, but big guys can bend the rules by running straight at a smaller (female) defensive player. It's technically not allowed. It's either move or get totally wiped out.

Tag rugby also has different scoring rules for male and female players in a mixed team. A female try scores 2 points, a male try only 1. That's to try and overcome the female disadvantage and avoid male players just passing between each other and leaving the women out totally.

@RabbitOfCaerbannog

Why are so many posters invested in denying the possibility that this girls' foot was broken because she was playing with a boy who is bigger and stronger? What purpose could that serve 🤔

Because twisting reality to serve an agenda is never a good look. It's incredibly improbable that this girl's foot broke because of anything the boy directly did and far more likely that she doesn't know how to fall and so landed awkwardly. Such is the nature of high contact sports. Broken ribs? Debatable, but a broken foot? No. That's not how the human body works. It just isn't.

Creepygnocchi, stop arguing with posters on MN and go and lecture the medical experts at the World Rugby Federation, since you apparently claim that they are wrong, and you believe yourself to be so much better informed than them.

I am a mere doctor, so my view that you are talking nonsense obviously doesn’t count.

My son is smallest in his year and during rugby sessions at school he is always knocked flat, and I can well believe that the fact that the girl was playing against a 14yr old boy had a lot of relevance to the injuries that she sustained during the tackle.

Because twisting reality to serve an agenda is never a good look.

A lesson for us all.

@RabbitOfCaerbannog

Because twisting reality to serve an agenda is never a good look.

A lesson for us all.

Indeed

There's no proper way to fall when you are taken out by a guy. It happens in the blink of an eye. I've played plenty of mixed sex football (which is only semi-contact) and I don't stand a chance against the men, even when they're holding back.

It is also not true that a male of the same weight as a woman has the same strength/risk of injury. By every objective measure they are stronger and tougher.

@InvisibleDragon - I agree. I played a couple of games of touch rugby and found the sex advantage of men enormous, even compared to football and found the game no fun at all.