Springbok assistant coach Felix Jones was a member of the specialist tackle height working group that has driven World Rugby's formal crackdown on hip-drop and knee-drop tackles, with the law changes now confirmed and implementation dates set.
Jones sat on the working group alongside URC match official boss Tappe Henning and a broader panel of coaches, players and medical experts. The group was established following February's Shape of the Game meeting and drew on game footage from sevens and fifteens competitions worldwide, as well as research commissioned from Leeds Beckett University.
The World Rugby Executive Board has approved two distinct measures. A hip-drop tackle — where a tackler uses their bodyweight to drag a ball carrier down and drops onto their legs from behind — will be explicitly added to Law 9.13 and will carry at least a penalty. That amendment comes into force on 1 November. A Law Application Guideline addressing knee-drop tackles takes effect earlier, on 5 October, reinforcing the existing prohibition on a player making a tackle while already on the ground.
The urgency behind the changes was underscored at this year's U20 World Championship, where two Australian players suffered serious lower-limb injuries. Fullback Treyvon Pritchard sustained a fractured fibula and syndesmosis injury following a hip-drop-like tackle in the match against Wales, the second such injury to an Australian player in the tournament after Chayse Geros was hurt against Spain.
World Rugby noted that hip-drop tackles, while relatively rare, carry a high risk of significant leg injury, and that knee-drop tackles had been identified as increasingly common. The working group's mandate sits within the same broader player-welfare programme under which World Rugby, in June 2026, approved a lower legal tackle height in community rugby — allowing unions to choose between waist or base-of-sternum height following trials involving more than 150,000 tackles.