New research outlines health and social benefits of sports as Rugby World Cup approaches
- World Rugby tackles awareness and misperceptions as it takes a leading role in player welfare
- Player welfare is rugby’s number one priority
- 92 per cent of parents firmly believe benefits of sport outweigh risks
- Educational strategies playing key role in injury prevention
Results from the World Rugby Sportswise Survey have revealed that while parents are understandably concerned about injuries, 92 per cent feel that the benefits of children playing sport far outweigh these risks.
More than 80 per cent of parents surveyed in the UK and Ireland say that they have never prevented their children from participating in an activity due to the risk of injury and even for a contact sport like rugby, the vast majority of parents are still happy for their kids to play contact rugby, including nearly eight out of 10 of parents with boys who are of tackling age (7/8+).
Keeping fit is the benefit parents think is most important (93 per cent), but social and mental skills and teamwork also rate highly (90, 89 and 88 per cent respectively). Two thirds of parents (67 per cent) even say sports keep children out of mischief.
The results come at a time when inactivity is reported to be responsible for more deaths than obesity and that eliminating inactivity in Europe would cut mortality rates by nearly 7.5 per cent (1). At the same time recent research has suggested that teachers believe 39 per cent of children across the UK leave primary school with a negative attitude towards being physically active (2) and almost one in four (23 per cent) children believe video games to be a form of exercise (3). At the same time, there have also been questions raised recently regarding the safety of sport for children and specifically about player welfare and safety in rugby at all levels of the game.
