World Rugby to launch 'next phase' of player welfare technology

World Rugby will roll out the “next phase” of smart mouthguard technology at the Women’s World Cup this year, with a flashing LED light signifying suspected concussion incidents.

The new technology, trialled in this year’s Major League Rugby, will be used at the World Cup that begins later this month, before being adopted in the elite men’s game for the new season, with the Rugby Championship waiting until 2026.

This is the latest iteration of the smart mouthguard since it was first included in the Head Injury Assessment process in January 2024, and has received a “full opt-in” for the World Cup, according to World Rugby Chief Medical Officer Prof Éanna Falvey.

The new technology will flag moments of high impact within “split seconds,” World Rugby Science and Medical Manager Dr Lindsay Starling said, causing the clear mouthguards to flash red, whereby a referee will immediately stop play in order for the player to be removed.

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“We’re incredibly excited about it,” Starling said. “It’s a full-circle moment, but it started in the women’s game. The value of the mouthguards, it’s just been exponential over the last year, and now we’re able to introduce the next iteration of the mouthguard, which is for player welfare, very much first and foremost, but also just creating more awareness around such an important topic in the game. Being able to do this in a platform like the Women’s World Cup, it’s just really exciting, and it’s the launch of the next phase.

“From where we were in January 2024 to where we are now is a whole different ball game. Naturally, there is a big learning curve with these mouthguards, especially when previously any form of concussion identification or HIA entry was anything observable, and now, which is the point of the mouthguards, it is to pick up things you cannot see. So sometimes there’s a disconnect and a hard learning to just trust the number that comes out the mouthguard. Of course, we know the research that has gone into it beforehand, we would never have rolled these out if we were not confident in them.”

With the current mouthguards, the slight lag in the Bluetooth connection means it is hard to immediately identify which impact it was that sent the alert to the doctors. Starling likened this to “connecting your phone to your Bluetooth speaker in your house, it can sometimes have a few seconds delay.” As a result, referees have to wait until a stop in play before the medical team can identify the impact and take the player off.

The LED lights have now made the process more “streamlined,” which speeds up the process and reduces the stoppage time in the match.

“The trials from the LED lights being lit up were pretty uneventful in that the mouthguard just lights up when the player has been hit, and that is it,” Starling said.

“Where it was slightly more interesting is, currently, when there’s been an alert, it gets sent via Bluetooth to the side of the field, which only takes a few seconds, but then they wait for a stoppage in play, and the player gets brought off. Especially when the player seems alright, there are sometimes questions of which event was it acutally that resulted in that impact? Now there is absolutely no delay in the light being lit up.

“It’s definitely made things more streamlined and the players know exactly what event it was that resulted in them being pulled off and it really created more awareness on the field.

“It’s exactly the same as if a referee were the first to identify if a player was not ok on the ground and they stopped play.”

The speed in which the mouthguard will light up now opens the door for referees to be able to identify potential moments of foul play instantly, as opposed to previously receiving the information slightly later.

While this could ensure players’ infringements do not go unnoticed by the officials, Starling warns against becoming over-reliant on the data.

“The thing that’s quite hard is that sometimes small knocks are also bad, but you could easily have a foul play incident that is very much foul play, but has not caused much of a knock,” she said. “What we need to be careful not to do is almost over-rely on the data or put too much power in the hands of the data.

“Data is incredibly powerful, but in this case it doesn’t tell 100 per cent of the picture. I think there is a world where the data from the mouthguards can start to come into play a little bit more with foul play, but what I think everybody needs to understand is in the same play that a player can get concussed and they are very observably not ok but it’s a pretty small head impact, it will be exactly the same case as things like foul play, where it was foul play but it actually the force of the hit was not high enough to register anything.”