The new craze on a collision course with credulity and a ‘don’t try this at home’ health warning
There is nothing subtle about the marketing for rugby’s new craze. The title for the latest video on the Run It Straight YouTube channel reads: “4 knockouts in ONE episode – Campbelltown got violent!”
Run It Straight has an easy premise; an attacker carrying a rugby ball runs into a defender with as much force as possible. Whoever handles that coming-together best, wins. Want the big collisions of rugby union and rugby league but without, well, all of the other boring rugby elements with your lineouts and long-range kicking? This is for you. ‘Send him to the fucking lobby’, screams the ‘Run It Straight’ host less than a minute into one episode. Knockouts, as you can tell, are frequent, with paramedics often rushing in. No wonder neurologists who have battled over the past decade to try to make rugby safer are watching in dismay.
Rewind to the start of the year and this was still a niche concept, a curiosity. Videos on YouTube and TikTok were attracting interest but the events were small, played out in local parks around the Sydney area. The last man standing wins the cash, AUS $5,000 (about £2,380). The first-ever video on the Run It Straight channel starts with a crystal-clear warning: “Medical professionals were on standby. We advised [sic] not to try what you’re about to see at home.”
Recent events have given the concept a much bigger profile. RUNIT, a rival operation in Australia to Run It Straight (stay with me here), held a glitzy first event in Melbourne a few weeks back.
From the Run It Straight videos you get a sense of community. RUNIT, meanwhile, was streamed live across the world, has judges and coaches running trial sessions, and comes with branded balls and merchandise while building partnerships with YouTubers. A recent event in Melbourne essentially took place on a rugby catwalk, rows of seated spectators watching competitors hurl themselves into each other on fake grass, like a violent Paris Fashion Week. “Attacker, ready! Defender, ready!” It all felt very Gladiators.
The Melbourne event was headlined by a clash between two former professional rugby players; Nemani Nadolo, who played for Fiji, the Crusaders and Leicester Tigers, up against George Burgess, the former England rugby league international. Burgess won and, tellingly, said on Australian television a few days later that he saw “some flaws” in the format, eager to improve the preparation and ensure competitors had the “right technique”. Perhaps Burgess was thinking of one moment when a defender was knocked out cold, lying at the feet of those same spectators on their phones. That clip has been viewed over half a million times on Instagram. The amateur winner of the event walked away with AUS $20,000 (£9,527).
This week, the tragic death of Ryan Satterthwaite, 19, has forced everyone to look at Run It Straight in a different way. Satterthwaite was not participating in a competition. He was at a friend’s birthday party in Palmerston North in New Zealand when, inspired by the trend, a group began playing and Satterthwaite suffered a “very freak accident”, as described by his uncle.
‘The evidence is that it’s a dumb thing to do and you should stop’
Christopher Luxon, New Zealand Prime Minister
Such has been the level of concern around Satterthwaite’s death that even Christopher Luxon, the New Zealand Prime Minister, weighed in heavily on Friday. “To the adults that are involved in more formal organisation of it and are influencing it and leading this out on social media, I think you need to stop and I can’t be any clearer,” Luxon said. “The evidence is that it’s a dumb thing to do and you should stop.”
Whether that tragedy will stop similar programmes from launching in the UK remains to be seen, with the Rugby Football Union understood to be aware of the issue and keeping an eye on it. The Observer understands that World Rugby is keen to clarify that the activity is not rugby union and does not reflect rugby laws or ethos, with the game’s governing body cautioning against involvement in such an activity.
You may well be wondering, given all that, why has this become so popular? The dots are easy to connect. Rugby union and rugby league have tied themselves in knots over the past decade to try to make the game safer, faced with the prospect of multiple lawsuits from thousands of players who have suffered brain injuries during their careers. In rugby union huge strides have been made, with stricter punishments for head contacts and the enforcement of a lower tackle height at community level.
What those measures will never prevent is that thirst for physicality which rugby supplies, the brutality of it. Combine that appetite with the ever-increasing popularity of combat sports, led by UFC, and while rugby is (correctly) continuously being made safer, this extreme offshoot was perhaps always inevitable. And while it is easy to understand the appeal, having followed the growth of this over recent months, watching amateur players with inconsistent technique hurl themselves into each other, one question continues to nag away. How many more tragedies will there be?
Photographs by Hannah Peters/Getty Images
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