TRYSTAN Bevan, the high performance coordinator at Cardiff Rugby, is in no doubt that the only way of ensuring better player welfare is reducing the number of substitutions to force the big men to play for longer.
Sir Ian McGeechan, Barry John, Willie John McBride and Sir Gareth Edwards have written an open letter to World Rugby chairman Sir Bill Beaumont highlighting their fears and asking for substitutions to be used only for injured players.
Bevan, 45, an S&C specialist who has worked at rugby's elite level for 22 years, wants law changes to help reset attitudes.
He told The Rugby Paper: “I think it's way overdue that they limit the number of subs. Is it a contributing factor that there's huge players that are coming on fresh when other players are tired? It's a really dangerous precedent in the game.”
“It also incentivises players to be as big as they can and to hit as hard as they can with no fitness consequence. A 140kg (22st) prop can literally look me in the eye as an S&C coach and tell me ‘well I only play half an hour every game, so I just want to demolish people when I come on'.
“The laws currently allow a player to have that attitude. I think keeping subs at eight would be a good idea because as far as player safety you don't know who is going to get injured, but I think you should only be allowed to bring on three or four.”
Bevan adds: “I'm doing a PHD with Imperial College in London at the moment. One of my opening studies is with a couple of professors at Imperial and we are about to publish a paper on momentum forces in rugby.
“One of the biggest findings I think will be that it's not the weight that causes the collision it's the speed. For example, if you go back to when Dai Young was playing. He was probably a 120kg (18st 9lb) prop for Wales and the Lions. He would play now, and he wouldn't be bigger or smaller than any of the props.
“People haven't got that much bigger in certain positions but some of the props now can run eight and a half metres a second.
“It's the equivalent of having an articulated lorry that's got a Porsche engine. By definition when the crash happens the impact forces are going to be a lot bigger, not because of size but because of speed.”
Strength and conditioning coaches rarely get the recognition they deserve, and Bevan is one of the best in the British game. Returning Cardiff director of rugby Dai Young thought the Neath man was such an integral part of his success when he was last in the Welsh capital, he brought him with him to Wasps as performance coordinator to get the players into a physical condition to play Young's all-court style of rugby.
Bevan has now returned to Cardiff under Young and sees huge improvements in the Welsh system since his departure five years ago.
“In the Wasps academy we had six or seven players like Jack Willis with similar physicality and size,” says Bevan. “Therefore, the best rugby player is the cream of the crop whereas sometimes in Wales historically when we've had a big player, we've gone crickey this guy's got to come through because we haven't got anybody else except for him.
“It's interesting because at national level you've got a Wales team who have been one of the fittest in the world over the last decade or so, but they play in a league where the average ball in play is 32-35 minutes, maybe even less.
“In the Premiership we were averaging 40-42 so the intensity of the game in the Premiership was significantly higher than what it's been historically in the PRO14. So, I would suggest that the Welsh players playing in the PRO14 have been at a disadvantage in the league system that we play.”
Bevan is now busy preparing Cardiff for the new season of the United Rugby Championship.
He said: “I'm trying to give Dai and the squad the resources from a conditioning point of view that they'll need. At Cardiff we've decided to go down a road which is more aligned with Dai's line of thinking but also aligned to where we think the game is going.
“In the Premiership you've got very big and strong players and I didn't think Wales had those cattle but we have now. We aren't behind size wise and I've been trying to get those big guys to move better and more often.”
■By STEFFAN THOMAS
