The machines test the strength of the players’ necks, both forward and back, and side-to-side. Neck strength in women players has emerged as a significant factor in preventing concussions and any resulting neurological damage.<\/p>\n
Sky News has been given exclusive access to the university’s work, which is funded by the governing body World Rugby, at a time when the sport is growing in popularity among women and girls.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/skynews-swansea-university_7166490.jpg\")
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Image:
\n A player taking part in the research gets to grips with one of the machines in the laboratory<\/p>\n
The success of England’s ‘Red Roses’<\/a> in last year’s World Cup<\/a> fuelled a boom in the sport’s popularity. But safety research has, until now, been heavily focused on the men’s game.<\/p>\n “Fifteen or 20 times a game, for university women, we saw these direct head-to-ground impacts, where the head would just whiplash and hit the ground very hard,” said Dr Elisabeth Williams, the university’s programme director for sport and exercise science.<\/p>\n “That hadn’t previously been documented as a primary mechanism of head trauma in rugby because most of those studies were done at the elite level and mostly in males.”<\/p>\n Image: That imbalance in research between the men’s and women’s game is now being corrected.<\/p>\n “Males tend to have quite a lot stronger necks or cervical spines than females do. It’s an impact sport, it’s a collision sport, that’s why we do it, it’s why we love it,” Dr Elisabeth Williams said.<\/p>\n “But when a female neck, female head undergoes a similar loading force to a male head and neck, it can respond quite differently.”<\/p>\n The machines in the lab provide readings of neck strength so players can work on improving it.<\/p>\n Researcher Sarah Clark said: “The stronger the neck, the less likely they are to be concussed.<\/p>\n “They can sort of reinforce themselves before they get this whiplashing effect.”<\/p>\n Image: ‘I know what it is now’<\/p>\n The questions about the impact of concussions in rugby are not new. More than 1,000 former players<\/a> have filed a lawsuit<\/a> against the sport’s governing bodies.<\/p>\n Among the hundreds of high-profile men who have joined the lawsuit are just a few women, including Non Evans.<\/p>\n Capped 87 times for Wales<\/a>, she played in an era, she says, when people took little notice of concussion.<\/p>\n “I didn’t think it had an impact until about 10 years ago when I started not feeling myself. I was forgetful, walking into rooms and wondering: ‘Why did I come in here?’<\/p>\n “I’d have headaches. I felt sick, emotional. And I put it all down to the menopause because I was in my early 40s. But as time went on and people who were speaking out about concussion and rugby, I thought: ‘Oh, maybe they’ve got something here’.”<\/p>\n Image: She has undergone neurological tests, which have confirmed what she suspected.<\/p>\n “When they tell you ‘this is an injury you’ve had from all the impact’ you suddenly think: ‘Wow, I know what it is now’. I do feel better now that I’ve had the tests done and I know that it has had an impact on my behaviour.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Would she make different decisions knowing that now?<\/p>\n “I wouldn’t have changed it. It has defined me as a person, my rugby career, and given me so much: friends, travel, experiences that I’ve taken on in life.<\/p>\n “Hopefully, I will be okay, and things won’t get worse, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”<\/p>\n In a statement, a World Rugby spokesperson said: “Player welfare is at the heart of everything World Rugby does. We recognise that the women’s game and women player welfare are very different to men.<\/p>\n “We’ve made funding of research into women’s specific player welfare one of our top priorities. Additionally, World Rugby has a golden rule that any research we fund must include a cohort of at least 50% female players before we’ll consider supporting it.”<\/p>\n Image: ‘It’s vital that we look after them’<\/p>\n On a wet and windy Sunday morning in Cheshire, the girls of Winnington Park Rugby Club’s under-14s are throwing themselves into a muddy practice match.<\/p>\n The enthusiasm for the game is clear here, and the parents sheltering on the touchline already see a sport changing rapidly.<\/p>\n “When I was a kid, if you got a bang on the head, you got the smelling salts or a wet sponge on your head and then carried on,” said dad Steven Tyrer.<\/p>\n “Now obviously we’re all a little bit more aware of what the repercussions can be, and it’s vital that we look after them.”<\/p>\n “With the couple of injuries that we’ve seen, I felt like the coaches were better at knowing what to do than even the paramedics when they arrived,” said mum Jane Casey.<\/p>\n Read more from Sky News: Dave Clinch said he does worry about the safety of his daughter – “but I don’t want to take her away from getting involved in things like this”.<\/p>\n He added: “We’ve got a headguard for her. I’ve taken her to hospital a couple of times with some knocks and scrapes, but she keeps coming back, she loves it.”<\/p>\n Winnington Park coach Nial Phillips said the benefits of physical activity, team spirit and positive self-image were the real values of the sport.<\/p>\n “You’ve got to get those foundations. A girl who is injured all the time won’t want to carry on playing rugby.”<\/p>\n Image: At Winnington Park – and in Swansea – there is a case for preparing the young.<\/p>\n Dr Williams said: “I have a daughter who’s coming up four and she will undoubtedly want to play rugby.<\/p>\n “What we’re doing now is a very graduated core strength building programme, appropriate for a three-year-old obviously, so when she says ‘Mummy, I want to play rugby’ I know that she’s fortified and she’s had that basic training.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a white-walled university laboratory, four female student rugby players are strapped face-down onto what look like upside-down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-493893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dr](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/skynews-dr-elisabeth-williams_7166483.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Dr Elisabeth Williams said women’s necks responded differently to trauma<\/p>\n![\"Researchers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/skynews-swansea-university_7166482.jpg\")
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\n Researchers watch footage of a collision during a women’s rugby match<\/p>\n![\"'I](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/skynews-non-evans-wales-women_7166493.jpg\")
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\n ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way’, Non Evans tells Sky News<\/p>\n![\"Winnington](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/skynews-winnington-park-rugby_7166615.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Winnington Park Rugby Club’s under-14s girls team play a match in Cheshire<\/p>\n
Former England captain reveals MND diagnosis<\/a>
Girls playing rugby ‘needs to stop being an anomaly’<\/a>
Flashing mouthguards could detect concussions<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Parents](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/skynews-greg-milam-women-rugby_7166614.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Parents told Sky News that while safety was a concern, they also did not want to put their daughters off the sport<\/p>\n