The evolution of physique in male rugby union players in the twentieth century
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Data on 1420 high-standard rugby union players measured between 1905 and 1999 were collated to chart the evolution of body size and shape in rugby union football. Individual data were available for 843 players. Where only summary statistics were presented, Monte Carlo simulation was used to generate pseudo-data. Anthropometric variables included height, body mass, body mass index (BMI) and somatotype where available. The rates of increase in body mass (2.6 kg per decade) and BMI (0.4 kg x m(-2) per decade) were well above those of the general population of young males. The increase in height (1.0 cm per decade) was comparable to the secular increase. The increases in body mass and BMI since 1975 have been three to four times those between 1905 and 1975. Since 1975, players have been less endomorphic (-0.3 units per decade) and less ectomorphic (-0.4 units per decade), but much more mesomorphic (+1.1 units per decade) than before. There is a close association between body size and success. Final ranking in the 1999 World Cup showed significant correlations with the average mass of the squads.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".