You don’t have to be an expert to see that rugby players are getting bigger and bigger year after year, but the staggering increase in the rate of this growth is truly phenomenal.
Rugby turned professional in 1995, and ever since then, an increasing emphasis has been placed on the importance of size and gym work in the game.
In Ireland, we need to look no further than the body-mass of our own players.
Take, for example, Robbie Henshaw, who as a back man weighs a staggering 102kg.
Sean O’Brien and Jamie Heaslip both weigh in at 102kg.
The latest statistic based on the All Blacks rugby team has shown that the weight of the average player has increased by almost 15kg ever since the dawn of professionalism in 1995.
https://twitter.com/KenQuarrie/status/886217515361284097
Young players are hitting the gym to bulk up in order to emulate the current professionals and this trend is showing no signs of abating.
The growth in players is surely linked to the easier access to gyms in recent years. Nowadays every club will have a gym, every small town, every village.
This obviously has huge effects on the game. It is much more hard-hitting, it really is survival of the biggest, but perhaps the most telling effect is that rugby players are afforded so much less space and time when they are on the ball.
Obviously, there are still special cases that buck the trend, with natural skill and pace carrying them. Beauden Barrett is a clear-cut example, Garry Ringrose is another. Former Ireland nippy scrum-half Peter Stringer is probably one of the most famous examples, but his kind are becoming fewer and further between.
It is certainly no longer a game for all shapes and sizes, however, and if you’re not going to be big, you’re going to have to be pretty extraordinary.
