Rugby World Cup 2019: How Wales have adapted to the brutal demands of the modern game

More than three decades since the first World Cup, rugby is a very different sport. Wales, under head of medical services Prav Mathema, have adapted accordingly

“All the metrics have changed. In many ways you’re looking at two different sports.”

The words are spoken by Prav Mathema, the Welsh Rugby Union’s longstanding head of medical services, but it’s a picture anyone who has followed rugby union since it turned professional in 1995 recognises.

The numbers speak for themselves. At this year’s World Cup there will be five times more rucks every match than at the first World Cup in 1987, the average player weight will be two stone per man more, the ball will be in play for an average of 39 minutes; more than double the time it was.

Collisions will be greater, players will be faster, bigger and fitter.

And the changes are continuing at a rapid rate. Since 2011 the number of tackles made in a professional match has more than doubled with most teams now expecting to make at least 150 tackles per match. In the last two seasons alone the average number of tackles per match has risen by 33 per cent.

Add in the back-to-back nature of tournament rugby and it all adds up to an unprecedented, and some would argue intolerable, demand on players’ bodies.

Mathema, among others, is charged with keeping the Welsh squad fit. It is something they failed to do at the last World Cup when Warren Gatland’s battered and bruised squad crawled into the quarter final to face South Africa without 10 first-choice players. It was hardly a surprise they lost.

Mathema insists lessons have been learned and mistakes will not be repeated. “We were absolutely ravaged by injuries in 2015,” he said. “Some of them were unavoidable but some were definitely avoidable. We’ve learned lessons.

“Those avoidable ones we have dissected and analysed. Those are the ones which much never happen again. We could have avoided them and we’ve worked out how. Ultimately it comes down to load management.”

The evidence appears to be on his side. In purely statistical terms, Wales had no right to win last year’s Six Nations, let alone the Grand Slam. They scored just 10 tries in five matches – 14 fewer than England – and made the least line breaks of any team. Their line-out success rate of 76.4 per cent was the worst of any team.

But with just one enforced change through injury in the entire tournament, Gatland was at a significant advantage over his rivals as Wales remained settled and cohesive throughout the tournament.

Mathema believes the secret lies in the centralisation of the WRU Global Positioning System (GPS) database which monitors players’ workload across the four regions and enables him and his medical team to micromanage their top players’ training schedules.

“Because of the investment the WRU has made we’ve been able to roll those GPS units across the game as a whole,” he said. “We have a uniformed system of monitoring and gives us a real advantage on that front. It allows us to manage performance and avoid real sharp spikes in load. Everything is visible.

“We use GPS data every day to understand how fast someone is running, how intensely they are running, how many times they are accelerating. All those things are absolutely essential for us to prepare someone but also ensure we’re not over or underloading someone because both will lead to injuries. It’s about finding the middle ground. It’s not always less is more.

“No doubt other teams do the same but it’s going to be more labour intensive for them because they don’t manage it centrally.”

With intensive training camps in Switzerland and Turkey under their belts, Wales players will head into the tournament in Japan believing they are the fittest in the world. They may well be right.

The manner in which old warhorse Alun Wyn Jones remained in peak condition throughout the Six Nations, and at the top of game, was testament alone to the work done behind the scenes by Mathema’s strength and conditioning team.

Careful planning and attention to detail has kept player such as Alun Wyn Jones in top condition (PA)

In the final Ireland game alone – a match Eddie Jones alleged Wales players had looked “tired” in the build-up – their 33-year-old captain made 19 tackles, cleared out nine rucks and carried seven times.

“We knew we weren’t tired,” Mathema said. “We knew our numbers and tapered player loads accordingly.”

Mathema, formerly head of medical services at Queens Park Rangers and Wasps, is confident Wales’ record low Six Nations injury rates can be repeated at the World Cup.

And if Gatland can pick his first-choice side more often than not, who knows where that could lead?

“I’d be in the wrong job if I didn’t think we could win it,” Mathema said. “Physically, I truly believe we can get there.”

More than three decades since the first World Cup, rugby is a very different sport. Wales, under Mathema, have adapted accordingly.