ArticleSports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.)2025
Evaluating the Probability of Head Acceleration Events in Elite Men's and Women's Rugby Union Match-Play: The Impact of Tackle Height and Body Position.
Article in Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Head Acceleration Event Exposure during Pre-Season Training in Elite Men's Rugby Union.Sports medicine - open · 2026Article
- Decoding the Tackle: Using a Machine Learning Approach to Understand Direct Head Contact Events in Elite Women's Rugby.European journal of sport science · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundHead acceleration events (HAEs) are an increasing concern in collision sports owing to potential negative health outcomes.
objectivesThe objective of this study is to describe the probabilities of HAEs in tackles of differing heights and body positions in elite men's and women's rugby union.
methodsInstrumented mouthguards (iMGs) were worn in men's (n = 24 teams, 508 players, 782 observations) and women's (n = 26 teams, 350 players, 1080 observations) rugby union matches. Tackle height (i.e. point of contact on ball-carrier) and body positions of tacklers and ball-carriers were labelled for all tackles in which a player wore an iMG. HAEs from the initial impact were identified. Mean player, tackler and ball-carrier exceedance probabilities for various peak linear and angular acceleration thresholds were estimated from ordinal mixed-effects models.
resultsContact with ball-carriers' head/neck resulted in the highest mean HAE probabilities for both sexes. The probability of an HAE to the ball-carrier decreased as tackle height lowered. The highest probability for the tackler was initial contact to the ball-carriers upper leg. Body position influenced the probability of HAEs, with falling/diving ball-carriers resulting in higher mean probabilities. When a player, regardless of role, was bent-at-waist, elevated HAE probabilities were observed in men's competitions. Women's data demonstrated similar probabilities of an HAE for all body positions.
conclusionsInitial contact to the ball-carrier's head/neck had the highest chance of an HAE, whilst role-specific differences are apparent for different tackle heights and body positions. Future player-welfare strategies targeting contact events should therefore consider HAE mechanisms along with current literature.
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