Don't worry I have been coaching junior rugby for fifteen years and the worst injuries have been a couple of broken collar bones

However with what I have seen in the professional game of late it seems as though player safety is increasingly at risk due to what is being coached, the increasing size of players and the weak officials.

I played Rugby League all my life and had my career ended by by an ill timed clumsy head high shot, resulting in a shattered neck at C5 - C6, severe compression of my spinal column, damaged nerves causing total loss of feeling in my left arm. It took hours of re-building, bone grafts and plenty of metal plates and screws etc, but thanks to Mr Shackleford, at least i was still here to have a son. so yes, maybe currently it "Rarely Happens" as you say, but that doesnt make you feel any better when you wake up in that hospital bed wondering if you will walk again, i can assure you of that mate. One thing is for sure though, if the RFL dont start putting players welfare "FIRST", you will start seeing injuries such as this more often, thats a definite!

Agreed past certain age groups but at the mini and junior levels the game is safe. Problems start with increasing size and strength.

well i am sorry to hear that and i wouldn't wish that on anybody but can i ask what age group was that? because even under 16's the body and collision are rarely heavy enough to cause that much damage. I know Johnny Lomax got a bad injury bleeding on the brain i believe at a young age but that happened the only match he wasn't wearing a head guard.

Agreed Mark, but kids will progress out of the junior level and i am finding myself questioning how i would feel if he ended up in the same situation as myself, when i was the one that actually introduced him to rugby league as a kid in the first place. The RLF need to grow a pair and stamp this out of our game Now before on of our players, (from whatever club), spends the rest of their lives drinking through a straw!

Yes it was playing Open Age, but it was also a daft, clumsy and in no way hard head high tackle, what people dont understand, (and back then i included myself), is how damn easy it is for someones neck to snap/shatter, the neck in the wrong position, not expecting the hit etc, i still wince and expect the worse every time a player receives a hit such as Russells. So dont delude yourselves in to thinking it can only happen when players reach a certain age, it can happen to anyone at any time and thats why player safety MUST be paramount at all times, regardless of age/level.

It can of course but my point was aimed at the worry of your children getting severely injured. Rugby league is a contact sport and severely banning a professional or amateur for a accident isn't right. There is only so much protection rules can give and every player and parent knows the risk and its the same with any sport, by the way i wouldn't be arguing if it wasn't a clear accident but it was.

Well only you and your son can decide, me and all three if my sons played or still play and middle son has just signed for Warrington and he loves the game too much to ever quit (and he has had a few bad injuries already).

Totally agree though that the RFL should do much more to protect the players and any player seen to be attempting to injure a fellow professional should get a very lengthy ban. And referees who cannot control a game likewise.

"Bang On Mark"!

Absolutely abysmal decision. I really do think that the RFL is no longer fit for purpose.

Go through the records of sending-offs and subsequent bans for shoulder charges over the last couple of years and there isn't one as bad as this and some were seriously just plain soft (I seem to recall Saints got stitched-up with a couple at Hull KR).

Basically in rugby ,apart from thinking, the head & neck play no part in the game so any contact whatsoever with either should be outlawed . There really is no need to tackle any higher than just above elbow height & anything else should be treated as foul play. In the wider interests of the game players need to be protected from injury ,protected from cheap thuggery & then we may see a bit more skill having to be used to win games.

Perhaps now is the time for the RFL to consider making head gear mandatory? I don't mean NFL style helmets but the kind of protection Chris Hill wears. I know some players don't like wearing them but player safety has to be no.1 priority. If I was TS and Warrington I'd be telling my players to get used to it, because if the RL and the refs can't protect the players, the club should.

Some players in our game are too brave for their own good, and we are approaching the day where a player is seriously, seriously injured on a pitch in the name of entertainment.

A Headguard wouldn't have protected Matt Russell, he got the sharp end of a shoulder fair and square in the mush.

Head gear would certainly have got us another season out of M.Monas