Rugby Is Getting Faster. Is It Also Getting Safer?

World Rugby is running two enormous experiments at once, and they pull in almost opposite directions.

On one side, a package of law changes designed to make the sport faster, more skilful and more entertaining to watch.

On the other, litigation from more than 500 former players arguing the sport has never done enough to protect them from the very physical contact those changes are, in some cases, trying to preserve.

Both are unfolding in 2026, and together they capture rugby's central, unresolved tension.

Rules built to speed the game up

World Rugby's recent law changes read almost entirely as a wish list for faster, more open rugby.

Removing the ability to be put onside from a kick simply by an opponent running or passing has cut down on slow, repetitive "kick tennis" exchanges.

Freekicks must now be tapped or kicked rather than converted into a scrum, keeping the ball in play rather than resetting into a static contest.

A relaxed offside law around uncontested lineouts removes marginal penalties that used to interrupt flow for minor technical infringements.

Trials for a shot clock on scrums and lineouts, alongside a rule letting a red-carded player be replaced after 20 minutes rather than leaving a team permanently down a man, both push in the same direction: less stoppage, more continuous, watchable rugby.

World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont framed the changes explicitly around boosting the game's "entertainment factor," language that signals how directly these law changes are aimed at making rugby more appealing to broadcasters and casual audiences, not just fairer or safer for the players on the pitch.

Rules built to slow the collisions down

Running in parallel, and in some tension with the push for pace, is a genuinely serious effort to reduce head contact.

A lower legal tackle height, requiring tackles below the sternum rather than allowing higher contact, is being trialled at the elite level for the first time at the 2026 World Rugby U20 Championship, following community-level trials across eleven unions that reportedly cut upright tackles by up to 10 percent and reduced concussion rates in some cohorts.

The "crocodile roll," a dangerous tackle-area technique, has been outlawed outright.

Smart mouthguards and independent concussion consultants are now standard requirements across most Tier One nations, with stricter medical thresholds for removing a player from the field.

These changes exist because faster, more open rugby doesn't automatically mean safer rugby.

More ball-in-play time and quicker transitions can just as easily mean more collisions at higher speed, not fewer, which is part of why World Rugby has had to pursue speed and safety as two genuinely separate, sometimes competing, priorities rather than assuming one naturally produces the other.

A legal case that's forcing the safety question into the open

Meanwhile, more than 500 former rugby union and league players are suing World Rugby and other governing bodies, alleging conditions including early-onset dementia and CTE linked to repeated head trauma sustained during their careers.

A High Court ruling in August 2026 allowed the bulk of those claims to proceed to trial, rejecting an attempt by governing bodies to have them thrown out on procedural grounds.

World Rugby's own defence acknowledges that brain injury is a "foreseeable and inherent risk" of the sport, while denying it breached any specific duty of care.

That litigation puts decades of rugby's past approach to player safety, not just the sport's current law changes, under formal legal scrutiny for the first time.

It's a reminder that faster, more entertaining rugby and genuinely safer rugby aren't the same project, even when both are being pursued by the same governing body at exactly the same time.

Can a sport genuinely pursue faster, more entertaining rugby and meaningfully safer rugby at the same time, or does one goal inevitably have to give ground to the other?