Tackling and the breakdown

RUGBY TRAINING Reading time : 12 min Updated August 30, 2026
The tackle is the phase that injures players most — about half of all injuries — and it is also the most re-legislated. This guide gives the tackle height the law imposes today, not the one everyone still quotes; the age at which a child may first tackle; then the two contests that follow the ball to ground, the ruck and the jackal. At each point, what World Rugby writes and what the FFR layers on top are shown side by side — because there is one authority, but several settings.

Tackle height, as the law sets it today

This is where coaches go wrong most often, because the rule changed and the old wording is still everywhere. Here is the law in force, as World Rugby writes it.

Legal tackle height — community and elite game A player silhouette with two horizontal lines: the shoulder line (elite limit) and the waist / base-of-sternum line (community-game limit since 1 July 2026). Below the community line the tackle is legal everywhere; between the two it is legal in elite but high in the community game; above the shoulder it is high everywhere. shoulder line elite limit waist / sternum community · 1 Jul 2026 high everywhere legal everywhere

Tackle height — World Rugby. Community game (from 1 July 2026): the legal line, set by the organiser, is the waist or the base of the sternum; the elite game keeps the shoulder.

GameLegal tackle lineWho sets it
Community game
from 1 July 2026		 The waist or the base of the sternum — one of the two. The match organiser chooses which. It is not fixed in law: it is a competition setting.
Elite game The shoulder line. World Rugby — unchanged.

Two games, two lines. In the community game, any contact above the organiser-set line (waist or sternum) is a high tackle; in elite the limit stays the shoulder. Neither the FFR nor Suisse Rugby (FSR) has a rival tackle-height law: they apply dispositions on top of the one World Rugby framework. Tackle height is therefore a union / competition setting, never a national constant — a club that commits to a height must say which one its organiser chose.

Never coach “below the armpit”. That was the 2019 trial wording, now superseded. A coach cueing “tackle below the armpit” is teaching a rule that no longer exists. The correct cue is waist / base of the sternum (community, organiser’s choice) or shoulder (elite).

The age decides what a player may tackle

Before height comes a simpler, stricter question: is this child even allowed to tackle? Contact is introduced late and gradually. Here is the FFR graded ladder — the French reference source — with, alongside, what is known of the others.

FFR categoryContact statusBallPaak band
M6No contact — “grab / hold” only; the educator calls PRIS (caught)T3u9
M8Touch + 2 s from September to December → tackle introduced January to JuneT3u9
M10TackleT3u13
M12TackleT4u13
M14 (women M15F)Full contactT4u13→u17
M16 / M19Full contact (World Rugby Under-19 variation)T5u17

The line to remember: the first legal tackle is M8, and only from January. Before that, you do not tackle — you grab, you hold, you touch. A full-tackle drill for a non-contact band is a safety violation, not a coaching choice.

PointFFR (France)Suisse Rugby / FSRRFU (England) — comparator
Tackle introducedM8, from January (touch + 2 s before)Anchor-level onlyStaged across Age Grade
Weight bandsNone — credential + reclassement (DTN + medical committee)None knownNone
Double age-group jumpForbidden——
Two cautions. The Suisse Rugby (FSR) ages are held at anchor level only — treat them as “assumed to track World Rugby / FFR” until confirmed against a current FSR document. And the RFU Age Grade is the most explicit year-by-year model, but its ages are English: it is a comparator, never an FFR / FSR rule. Finally, Paak’s four bands (u9 / u13 / u17 / sen) are a product derivation published by no federation — it is the contact reality, not the band label, that governs the drill.

Shape before contest

Every contact skill is taught as a shape — body position, head placement — before it is a fight. It is the through-line of all youth rugby: the tackle shape before the full-power tackle, ball presentation before the ruck contest. And head safety runs through all of it: head to the side, never lead with the head; you never lead the contact with your head.

SkillBandsWhat you work
Evasion only
“sharks and fishes”		u9, u13Avoid, dodge, run into space — no tackle. It is the youngest contact cell, filled with non-contact.
Side-on tackleu13, u17The side-on tackle, from the tackle age: shoulder, ring the arms, head behind or to the side.
Front-on tackleu17, senThe front-on shape, then the full-contact front-on tackle once the shape is owned.

The order is not negotiable: the contest for the ball comes after the technique of contact. A child learns to fall, to present, to get up long before being asked to fight for possession.

The ruck: the gate and offside

Once tackler and ball-carrier are down, the ball is on the ground and the ruck forms. Two rules govern the spot: you enter through the gate (in the axis, from behind), and everyone stays behind their offside line, which runs through the hindmost foot of the ruck, parallel to the goal line.

The ruck: the gate and the offside lines A ruck in the centre, ball on the ground. Players enter through the gate, in the axis. On each side an offside line parallel to the goal line runs through the hindmost foot; everyone stays behind it. Offside line — hindmost foot Offside line — hindmost foot the gate — enter in the axis The ruck ball on the ground

The ruck — World Rugby, Laws of the Game (ruck and offside); Paak rugby corpus.

As with the tackle, the ruck is taught in stages, youngest to oldest — and the contest comes last:

StageBandsInstruction
Ball presentation
no contest		u9, u13Fall, orient the body, present the ball cleanly — with no fight for possession.
Presentation + controlled clear
at touch		u13, u17Add the clear-out, but no live contest — at touch, to keep the speed without the collision.
Clean-outu17, senThe real clean-out technique. Safety cue: the head and neck are never the contact zone.

The jackal and the breakdown contest

The jackal is the contest for the ball at the tackle: the player on their feet, balanced, contesting possession before the ruck forms. It is the last brick of the breakdown, and it is not a young player’s skill: the jackal decision is worked from u17, once the tackle shape and the ruck shape are mastered.

Rugby keeps its own words: ruck, maul, jackal, offload — the terms coaches use on the touchline. They are the coaching label; the analytics engine may store a longer form, but a coaching point does not.

What the tackle costs — and what the law does not prove

The tackle concentrates most of the risk, which is why the height law keeps moving. Here are the numbers, attributed to their source, and one nuance most messaging drops.

  • The tackle causes about half of all injuries. At the 2019 World Cup (analysis in SAJSM 32(1)), the overall rate was about 79.4 per 1000 match-hours, of which the tackle ≈ 47.8 %; concussion at ≈ 12.2 per 1000 (reported not significantly different from prior events). These are elite men’s figures — they justify a direction (tackle emphasis, gradual contact), not an expectation for a youth club.
  • Concussion is the most-reported single diagnosis at elite level. Rates rise with age and level: youth rugby is far lower-incidence than the professional game — the very reason contact is layered on gradually.
The evidence behind lowering the tackle line is a NULL. The RFU community-game lowered-tackle-height trial (Stokes et al., BJSM 2021) found no statistically significant reduction in concussion: the head-injury rate ratio was about RR 1.31 (95% CI 0.85–2.01) — the interval crosses 1, so not significant — and, strikingly, tacklers were concussed at a higher rate (≈ RR 1.90). The trial was ended early. Lowering the line is plausible but unproven as a concussion measure, and it shifts risk toward the tackler. Never present lowering the height as proven: it is a risk-management choice under uncertainty.

And when the head is hit, rugby has a protocol, not a guess. The carton bleu (blue card — a match official removes a player with a suspected concussion) triggers a mandatory medical pathway on the graduated return-to-play (GRTP) framework: a player with a suspected concussion is removed and does not return the same day. In France, the FFR sets return timelines differentiated by age and by number of concussions:

Age group1st concussion — earliest return2nd3rd
Under 19day 23day 42 + specialist opinionday 180
19 and overday 21+ specialist opinionday 90

These are minimums, not targets. (One point to confirm against the current FFR form: the initial rest period, quoted at 24 h in public text and 48 h at anchor level — both agree there is a mandated initial rest; the return-day minimums above are unaffected.)

Frequently asked questions

At what age may a child tackle?
Under the FFR, the tackle is introduced at M8, from January (before that it is touch + 2 s; at M6 there is no contact — you grab / hold and the educator calls “PRIS”, caught). It is not the band label that decides but the contact reality the federation publishes. Suisse Rugby (FSR) is assumed to track World Rugby / FFR until confirmed.
Should we still coach the tackle “below the armpit”?
No. “Below the armpit” is the 2019 trial wording, now superseded. The law in force (from 1 July 2026) sets the line at the waist or the base of the sternum in the community game — at the match organiser’s choice — and at the shoulder in elite.
Does a scrum cap protect against concussion?
No. A rugby scrum cap reduces superficial injuries (cuts, abrasions, cauliflower ear) and is permitted padding, but it does not prevent concussion — the soft padding allowed does not attenuate the rotational forces involved. Presenting it as concussion protection would be false and unsafe.

Sources

World Rugby, Laws of the Game (Law 8 scoring; Law 9.29 yellow card; ruck and offside; community/elite tackle height from 1 July 2026) · FFR, École de Rugby fiches 2025-2026 (graded contact ladder M6 → M14; weight bands: none; reclassement by DTN + medical committee; double age-group jump forbidden) · FFR, carton bleu / concussion-protocol documentation (age-differentiated return timelines; initial rest 24 h / 48 h to confirm) · World Rugby concussion / GRTP guidance · Stokes et al., RFU community-game lowered-tackle-height trial, BJSM 2021 (null result: RR ≈ 1.31, CI 0.85–2.01; tacklers ≈ RR 1.90; trial ended early) · Rugby World Cup 2019 injury analysis, SAJSM 32(1) (≈ 79.4/1000; tackle ≈ 47.8 %; concussion ≈ 12.2/1000, ns) · RFU Age Grade (foreign comparator, English ages) — Paak rugby corpus. Content verified August 2026; Suisse Rugby / FSR ages are held at anchor level and assumed to track World Rugby / FFR until confirmed.

The scrum and the lineout — the two set pieces, with their own age gate — are covered in Scrum, lineout and set piece.
Last updated: August 30, 2026 ID : help.rugby.tackling-and-breakdown