Conrad Smith: "Everyone wins when players have a seat at the table"

By Conrad Smith

It was never a given that I would return one day to the world of professional rugby. Throughout my life, I have always been curious to try new things or start a fresh project. But the truth is, from my first days as a player, I always appreciated the work that our representatives were doing – going into battle with the governing bodies, defending our interests, negotiating day and night to reach a new collective agreement – and it probably appealed to my legal experience as a trained barrister. You play hard, but you play fair.

Today, I am proud to serve as Head of Rugby Operations with International Rugby Players (IRP). We represent professional players around the world, supporting their welfare, and uniting them around shared opportunities and concerns.

We also understand the value of working with player associations in other sports. Indeed, we recently invited FIFPRO to present on Player IQ and their player workload research at World Rugby’s annual medical conference, while later this month we will participate in the World Players Association’s Health & Safety Summit, which involves player associations from across global sport – football, cricket, tennis, NBA, NFL – sharing research and insights from their work.

My own work focuses on players’ athletic performance, helping them to manage an increasing workload and how it affects their physical and mental health. Our players face a challenge that grows only more complex as their sport evolves and performance reaches new heights.

If I look at how we talk about player welfare today and try to find practical solutions that work for the players and their teams, I sincerely believe that professional rugby is leading the way in many respects.

Progress begins with proper representation. Together with my colleagues from IRP, we sit on virtually all the working groups and committees run by World Rugby, our global governing body. This includes the High-Performance Committees for men’s, women’s, 7’s as well as the Concussion Working Group and Player Load Project Group, to name but a few.

Our dialogue with World Rugby is vital. When we have a seat at the table, the players have a voice. And when the players are part of the conversation, we find solutions that work.

Conversations are not always easy. It was a difficult one that began a decade ago, between World Rugby and the players’ representatives, which finally led to the Player Welfare Guidelines that have since become a critical and respected benchmark.

Back in 2019, as World Rugby sought to expand its international competitions, and proposed the first version of the Nation’s Cup, the players certainly saw the professional opportunities, but they understood the risks too. Rightly, they demanded greater consultation.

The players had a clear position: if we are facing more games – and a higher risk of injury, including concussion and its possible long-term consequences – then we need universal safeguards that protect every player. We need clear guidelines on rest, recovery, and rehabilitation.

Looking back today, I believe that everyone who sat around the table, hammering out what would become the Player Welfare Guidelines, can be proud of their work. When players secure their right to a safe and healthy workplace, the entire sport benefits. Players and their teams reach higher standards, tournaments become more competitive, fans get more excitement, and rugby attracts a bigger global audience.

I am confident we can achieve similar progress on concussion. After years of experimentation, we have now developed a generation of instrumented mouth-guards, which measure every impact and collision that a player experiences. Sitting close to the brain, the new models provide a volume and quality of data that is unprecedented – and it all helps to keep the players safe.

Critically, the data shows how every player, male and female, reacts differently to physical impact. It allows us to analyse whether a player’s movement and technique might better absorb a collision; or whether, alternatively, it is muscle strength and body condition that play a greater role.

The sheer granularity of the data, a high-resolution 3D picture of every second of a player’s experience, can raise standards of safety across the entire sport. It allows us to manage the head-acceleration events that can cause injury – from the specific moment of a dangerous high tackle to an excessive workload over an extended period.

As I look to the future of our sport, the progress we have made on player welfare – increasingly with the help of technology – fills me with optimism.

The better we protect our players, the more we can focus on the brilliant and beautiful parts of our game: the camaraderie among the players, the respect that prevails in such a physical sport, and how that same spirit infuses the stadium, where fans hug and shake hands at the end of a hard game, won or lost.

This is the game I have always loved. This is why our work matters.