The Joy of Rugby Injuries

We love contact sport because it has contact, and the best contact sport is Rugby. Only in Rugby can the full weight of 16 men (two scrums worth) be forced through the kneck bones of 6 men who don't even have necks (or as the T-shirt goes 'One man pushing two men's heads up three men's butts). Only in Rugby is the use of studs to 'ruck' a man off the ball legal (or at least it was but you still see it all the time). Only in Rugby is it stacks on when someone is tackled. And only in Rugby is the cauliflower ear worn as a badge of pride.

So when the old story of Buck Shelford getting a testicle pushed back in and his scrotum stitched up and playing on revived last week prior to Bledisloe, it triggered a search for the best Rugby injuries on the web. Funnily enough, to find the best Rugby injuries I did a search for 'worst Rugby injuries'.

This is what the Rolling Maul found:










This photo


From the Still Angry Blog: The best Rugby injury I've witnessed was when a teammate had his forehead stepped on and there was a nice round cleat-shaped dent in his forehead (yes, he had a skull fracture and deformation). It was just one of those things, and while he came off, there was no real fuss over it (ok outside of the need for immediate and serious medical attention).

From The Daily Californian: In Time Magazine when I was an eighth grader I saw a guy with his index finger down to the first knuckle into another guy's eye.

From Vuvuzela Online: I broke my shoulder last year. There were two guys coming down the field and I couldn’t decide which one to tackle. I went for both of them and broke my AC joint.



Urghhh. This photo from Rudius Media: I don't know anything about any sort of pro rugby, but I play for my university squad and this happened to my friend. The first thing he did was scream, the second thing he did was tell us to take a picture, the third thing he said was to call 911. That happened at the beginning of fall season last year, he was back for spring season, then tore his pcl this fall, but he wants to play again this spring. I love this fucking sport. Nowhere else does shit like this happen.

Also from Rudius Media: The only other really bad Rugby Injury that sticks with me is having My groin rucked till it bled by some bastard bumpkin. I got up and punched on with him to an immediate yellow card. Coming off my coach has asked me why I attacked with such venom.. Then he noticed the red patch pooling around the place on my shorts where my balls should have been situated and understood.

And this: Worst injury I've witnessed in person was at training in school. The pitch was a mudbath, the really sticky mud that makes the sucking noise when you try to pull your feet out. We were playing a practice match, and one of the backs goes into contact. A maul forms, and starts to move. What we didn't know was that the guy's foot was still stuck in the mud and he couldn't get it out. He ended up with a dislocated hip. The screams were something else. It wasn't gruesome, like a compund fracture or severe limb break, but the thought of having your leg slowly pulled out of it's socket like that is horrible.


Now it's your turn. What's your best injury (not necessarily yours of course)?

NEW: Think this is bad? Check out the sequel. Visit More Joy of Rugby Injuries.

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