Rugby Giants

There is an interesting story on the BBC news website today about the way in which rugby players are getting bigger and bigger and the impact it is having on the tactics of the game.

If we combine those figures to give us the average weight and height of an England player, the trends are even clearer.

Someone who pulls on the white shirt in 2012 is on average almost three stone heavier and three inches taller than their predecessors of 50 years ago. They are well over a stone heavier and an inch taller than the XV which completed a second successive Grand Slam in 1992 and have 4.5lbs and almost an inch on the team of 2002 that went on to win the World Cup 18 months later.


1962: 85.7kg, 1.80 m
1972: 90.7kg, 1.85 m
1982: 89.9kg, 1.82 m
1992: 96.8kg, 1.85m
2002: 101.9kg, 1.86m
2012: 104kg, 1.88m

"Some of the collisions are like car crashes," he says. "When you get George North running flat out into a Manu Tuilagi, the forces involved are incredible. You get some horrific injuries from contact. You can hear half the impacts from the touchline."
After the last Lions tour, the squad's vastly experienced doctor James Robson - also Scotland's team doctor - warned that the size of players was forcing rugby towards a "watershed" moment.

"People are trying to run through the opposition, rather than around them," he said. "My hope is that coaches recognise that and we get a little bit smaller and faster and more skilful - that players win the space rather than the collision."

What the article doesn't explain is why they are now so big?  Is it jstu a general population who are bigger, are they better trained - they are certainly very well muscled now - better nutrition?