Sky Sports Rugby League expert and former Super League player Jon Wells assesses whether it is time for a rethink around the 18th player rules when teams are shorthanded due to failed head injury assessments...
Round 19 of the Betfred Super League pitched the champions against the league leaders as St Helens hosted Catalans Dragons in one of the games of the season - and a match where Les Dracs underlined their status as genuine Grand Final contenders again in 2023.
However, the game also threw into focus the combative nature of the sport, as both James Roby and Mark Percival left the field for head injury assessments (HIAs), which they both subsequently failed. St Helens played for 34 minutes with just 15 available players, and 57 minutes with 16 available players following the departures of Percival and Roby in that game.
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So what? Some will ask. Injuries are a part of the game - teams regularly lose players to injury and have to manage. This is true, but the context in which the game needs to think is one of rising insurance costs, increased awareness of the damage of repeated head injury, and threatened litigation by past players.
In this environment, it seems as though in our sport, in this country, we have an unnecessary playing load placed on those remaining players when one or more have to leave the field for no-fault concussion-related injuries like those sustained by Roby and Percival.
I want to park any discussion here over the effect that losing a player in a 17-player sport has on performance and results. Sin-bins and red cards as well as injury are an inevitable part of our sport. I want to focus here on an area that has rightly been the subject of plenty of attention in recent years.
As greater links are made between the incidence of concussion - specifically, the repeated incidence of sub-concussion - in sportspeople and subsequent cognitive deterioration in later life, governing bodies have facilitated the undertaking of research into their sports in order to better understand the mechanics of concussion as well as introducing protocols with the aim of mitigating their incidence and magnitude.
With that in mind then, the thread of the argument goes like this: In what is a 17-a-side sport, when one team is forced to play with 16 or 15 players as a result of a no-fault failed HIA, it places an unwarranted additional workload, an unnecessary additional exposure to more tackles, and a likely increased level of fatigue - often cited as a significant contributor to incorrect tackle technique, for example - among those remaining players.
That this happens routinely when a player is injured, sin-binned or sent off is irrelevant here, because we are talking about a no-fault reduction of available playing personnel during a game.
I don't think that the on-field regulations around what happens following failed HIA are satisfactory in their current form. Specifically, I refer to the rules surrounding the 18th player, and the circumstances in which they may participate in the game.
For 2023, the RFL introduced a law allowing for an 18th player to be named on the matchday team sheet. The reason for the introduction of an 18th player was to remove pressure from a doctor who is tasked with the unenviable decision to rule out a player due to concussion.
However, the current laws allow for this 18th player to be made available to participate in the game, only upon the third failed HIA from the matchday 17.
It has its roots in the NRL on-field regulations but was transcribed only in part from the Australian game, because the NRL also permit the "activation" of the 18th player if the first or only failed HIA in a game is as a result of foul play by an opposing player or players.
I'm not convinced this goes far enough in either Super League or the NRL. The rationale for introducing the rule does not marry with the actual window for its operation.
I have yet to hear a reasonable argument - when weighed against the obvious increased exposure of the remaining players on the field - as to why an 18th player cannot be activated on the first failed HIA, regardless of fault.
With all the other positive developments, proposals and testing currently underway in rugby league in this country such as data collection and analysis from instrumented mouthguards which record head accelerations during matches, academy trials in which players are permitted to tackle only below the armpit in an attempt to reduce the amount of head contact, and the 11-day mandatory stand-down following a failed HIA, it seems ridiculous that we don't take the easy win here and make a change to the 18th player rule to allow activation on the first failed HIA.