720 FO50 – Breaking down the tackle: tackle characteristics associated with concussion in female varsity rugby union
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Concussion rates associated with the tackle in rugby union (hereafter, rugby) are amongst the highest in collision and female sports. Early evidence indicates that tackle and head impact mechanisms differ between males and females. To improve female player welfare, female-specific evaluations are needed to inform optimal safety recommendations. Objective To evaluate the association between tackle characteristics and concussion in female rugby. Design Case-control video analysis study. Setting Female university rugby. Participants Anonymous match footage from a Canadian university rugby competition (2017–2019; 48 matches). Assessment of Risk Factors Every case (concussive tackle) was matched by team and game to six randomly selected control (non-concussive) tackles. Bivariate penalized maximum likelihood logistic regression analyses were used to compute odds ratios (OR) [95% confidence intervals (95% CI)] between exposures (tackle characteristics) and outcome (concussion). Tackle characteristics [head contact intensity (4-point ordinal scale indicating head contact intensity), tackle type, pre-contact and contact body position, pre-contact head position, speed, acceleration] were chosen a-priori. Main Outcome Measurement Tackle-related concussion. Results Forty-six concussions (25 ball-carrier, 21 tackler) were identified from 45 tackle events. Head contact intensity of 3–4/4 (OR: 48.5; 95% CI: 12.9–182.7), illegal tackle type (OR: 13.3; 95% CI: 1.9–93.7), low pre-contact body position (OR: 3.3; 95% CI: 1.0–10.6), and away head position (OR: 4.0; 95% CI: 1.1–14.3) were associated with ball-carrier concussion. Three tacklers in the event (OR: 7.0; 95% CI: 1.5–33.7), head contact intensity of 3–4/4 (OR: 30.6; 95% CI: 7.0–133.5), and down head position (OR: 3.0; 95% CI: 1.2–7.5) were associated with tackler concussion. Conclusions The identified variables (i.e., head impact intensity, head/body position, # tacklers in event) in the present study can be used to inform targeted injury prevention strategies (e.g., law change, tackle training program) aimed at reducing concussion in female rugby. Strategies aiming to minimize head contact are needed.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 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".