A controversial collision sporting event is facing an uncertain future after a judge dismissed attempts by its founder to liken the head-to-head collisions that form the basis of its competition to tackles in rugby league.
The Run Nation Championship is a competition in which two contestants, predominantly former rugby league or union players, run at each other and collide in front of spectators.
Health experts have warned the sport is potentially life-threatening, but organisers have claimed the competition is a safer version of the “run it straight” trend which resulted in the death of a 19-year-old in New Zealand last year.
Run Nation brought the state’s regulator for combat sports to the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday in an attempt to quash a notice ordering them to cancel their next event, scheduled for this Saturday at Royal Randwick racecourse.
They claim that, like rugby league, their competition is not a combat sport and therefore should not fall under the authority of the state regulator.
The co-founder and chief executive of Run Nation Championship, Tremaine Fernandez, told the court he had employed ex-NRL player Sandor Earl to “bring the professionalism from rugby league” into the Run Nation Championship rule book.
“The [Run Nation Championship] contest was created on the spectacle of rugby league ‘off the back fence’. That is where a ball runner is running 30 to 40 metres into a pack of defenders,” Fernandez said.
“The first part of that contest or that spectacle that everybody loves of rugby league is the big tackle. It’s not the tackle around the leg. So we have tried to, in a controlled environment, replicate that moment.”
Fernandez said several aspects of the competition had been changed after the second edition of the competition when athletes expressed concern about the longevity of their careers.
“We have not had one person compete at an event or make it through a [training] combine who has not spent the majority of their life putting their footy boots on on the weekend,” Fernandez said. “We want these guys to have quite long careers in this sport.”
The event’s rules, which were dissected in court, dictate that one player is a ball carrier and the other a defender. They each stand either side of a centre line before running at each other and meeting in a collision.
Several revisions to the rule book made ahead of the proposed event on Saturday include removing the criteria that judges score based on “collision damage” and instead consider “momentum outcome” which includes positioning of the feet, control, posture and balance following the contact.
However, Justice Andrew Coleman, who has served on the NSW Rugby League tribunal, said deliberate references to rugby league didn’t make the Run Nation Championship “something that it’s not”.
“It’s not a rugby league tackle,” he said.
The Combat Sports Act 2013 defines a combat sport as any sport, martial art or activity where the primary objective is for one combatant to strike, kick, hit, grapple with, throw or punch one or more other combatants. Lawyers for Run Nation argued that even if the judge were to find the sport included striking or hitting, it was not its primary objective.
“The primary objective is not the collision, the primary objective is to get through the collision and continue the momentum,” Bernard Quinn, KC, said.
Coleman said this was at odds with the fact that unlike in rugby league, where a player attempts to avoid tackles with the aim of scoring a try, there is no other action which follows the collision in the Run Nation Championship.
“If his primary objective was to run through, he’d just side-step the defender,” Coleman said. “The momentum can only come as a result of the collision.”
Despite distancing themselves from the “run it straight” trend, the previous version of the Run Nation Championship rule book included an option for athletes to “run it straight” where instead of choosing a lane, the defender and ball carrier line up on the centre line before colliding.
That option is still permitted in the proposed rule book for Saturday’s event, but has been renamed “centre court”.
If the event goes ahead, athletes will also wear specially made padded shirts, which arrived in Australia on Tuesday morning ahead of the court hearing. However, expert evidence questioned the amount of protection the equipment affords beyond skin abrasions.
Coleman indicated he will make his decision on Thursday. Despite the uncertainty, tickets are still on sale for Saturday’s event, with the most expensive priced at $999. Their previous competitions have attracted current NRL stars as spectators, including Cody Walker and Latrell Mitchell.
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