More law tweaks are on the way. If rugby in 2025 was largely defined by better recognition of how the kicking game is officiated, clampdowns on escort runners favouring kicking sides and increasing the volume of aerial contests, we may well be able to take a guess at what legal variety 2026 and beyond will bring.
Earlier this week, World Rugby announced that next year’s Under-20 World Championship will see the permitted tackle height lowered from below the neck to below the sternum. It is the latest progression in a law trial which has been ongoing for a number of years.
In Ireland, amateur rugby is already at this stage. The slow march to lower tackle heights across the whole sport appears unlikely to stop.
Should senior rugby go the way of the club game, it would arguably be one of the more drastic law changes in the game’s relatively short professional history. Is a lower tackle height coming to rugby on our screens and would it be a good thing?
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Is rugby set to change forever?
Historically, professional rugby has been resistant to change. Look at World Rugby’s crackdown more generally on head contact and high tackles. In 2019, when they announced a stricter focus on protecting the head, plenty in the international game were up in arms.
One high-profile coach berated a World Rugby official on the phone, predicting that that year’s World Cup would be a mess, a spectacle ruined by an increasing volume of red and yellow cards. After the tournament’s opening weekend, following a number of controversial incidents including high tackles, World Rugby publicly criticised their own officials.
Six years later, head contact and cards are still a major issue. We now have 20-minute reds which, by definition, reduce a team’s punishment for certain types of collision. The change came from concern over spectacles being ruined by technical errors in a dangerous sport. Plenty would counter by saying that World Rugby caved to coaches who were unwilling to sufficiently change player behaviour.
If we couldn’t convince top-level rugby to change their ways with more red cards, how will rewriting the very tackle law be received? Away from the evidence of past behaviour, some have been outspoken on their lack of support for sternum tackles.
“As a tackler, you have a duty of care every time you go into contact,” said Leinster and Ireland wing James Lowe this week. “I just think that that’s it. You can’t say if you tackle above the hips, it’s going to be a penalty. I don’t think you can do that.
“No matter the situation, there is a level of due diligence that you have to take into your own hands going into contact.”
Lowe’s former team-mate, ex-Leinster hooker James Tracy, recently took to the radio airwaves in agreement. “I think that new law is ridiculous, you’re trying to make a dangerous game safe,” he told Off The Ball.
“It’s like trying to make boxing safe. I’m not saying that everyone should be getting whacked in the head in rugby but the tackle below the sternum law, where does it begin and where does it end? If someone’s running with their head down, what are you meant to do in that scenario?”
Fortunately, World Rugby did answer Tracy’s question. Ball carriers will be penalised if they lead into contact with their head in a way which makes a sternum tackle impossible. In pick-and-go situations close to the ruck, or when carriers are attempting to dive over the try line, there will also be leniency with officials aware of the difficulty of tackling low when attackers barely get off the ground themselves.
Such nuance around the law has already been seen in Ireland. For the last two years, schools and AIL rugby has operated with below-the-sternum tackles, with referees less keen to penalise higher tackles in situations close to the ruck.
Last month, the IRFU came out with its findings on the tackle height trial across the Irish amateur game. According to their data, the law change was a great success.
The IRFU say in the last two years concussion rates in the men’s AIL have dropped by 33 per cent. In the women’s competition, the same figure is 18 per cent. Tackle-related injuries are down by 21 per cent in men’s club rugby, 34 per cent for women.
Interestingly, while tackle injuries have fallen by 10 per cent in schools senior cup rugby, significant changes in concussion rates were not seen among school players. The IRFU say that they are “committed to continuing to work with their schools to enhance education, tackle technique and player behaviours in our schools game”.
Despite the positive numbers, this law trial wasn’t always straightforward. Speaking on The Counter Ruck podcast after year one of the initiative, then Terenure head coach Seán Skehan explained that, in matches involving his team, the average number of penalties rose from 20-25 to close to 40, albeit such teething programmes were eventually sorted.
Other AIL coaches have indicated their frustration at what they see as inconsistent application of the law. Some involved in women’s teams are sceptical that, at a global level, the data governing these decisions doesn’t overly focus on the men’s game.
Regardless, after giving the laws two years to settle and armed with figures pointing to a safer sport, the IRFU have made clear that, in competitions under their jurisdiction, below-sternum tackles are here to stay. Not just for safety reasons.
Findings say that the sport as a spectacle has improved, with ball-in-play time increasing by an average of four minutes per match. Offloads, rucks and kicks all rose as well, the IRFU claiming this showed “improved game flow and fluidity”. World Rugby, for their part, came up with a different conclusion, outlining that only minor changes were recorded across the world in terms of offloads and game flow.
Several people involved in Irish amateur rugby list the decline in two-man tackles as the biggest change as far as the defensive eye-test is concerned. The “one low, one high” method, favoured by many defence coaches in order to target the ball and limit offloads, becomes much riskier if the tackle line drops. Nearly all professional teams employ some variety of this system, perhaps making it understandable why there is reticence in some quarters towards the expanding trial.
World Rugby bringing in a lower tackle height to next year’s Under-20 Worlds is a significant step for three reasons. Firstly, they are giving coaches more time to adjust, unlike in 2019 when a new head contact framework was announced eight days before that year’s tournament. Secondly, 2026 will be the first time the elite game will operate under a sternum law. Finally, the move adds some sort of timeline for making a decision on lower tackles in senior rugby.
“If this is successful and shows good metrics and positive outcomes, the question is whether we take that into the elite game,” said Jonathan Webb, World Rugby’s vice-chair. “That is going to be a big decision, but my own feeling is that it will have to be an all or nothing.”
In other words, informed by how next summer’s tournament in Georgia fares, when it comes to implementing sternum tackles across the board, it’s getting closer to the time where World Rugby has to do the proverbial or get off the pot.
