Wednesday 4 October 2017 12:13, UK
Leicester hooker Tom Youngs believes the club were right to withdraw from their A League game against Newcastle on Sunday because it helps protect the squad from injury.
Tigers withdrew from the second-string fixture after injuries to prop forwards Ellis Genge and Logovi'I Mulipola in the build-up to the weekend game against Exeter.
The club cited "player welfare" as the primary reason for the match being called off, and Youngs fully supports that action.
"It's important to keep player welfare good," he told Sky Sports News. "The physios and the sports scientists keep us in good shape but if we're not quite there then it's not worth risking it.
"I think it was the right decision to call off our second-team game last week. We could put a squad together but it would have been a case of risking players for the following week.
"It's a tough one because it's important to develop players for the first team but at the same time it's not worth the injury risk."
Leicester's actions come amid fresh concerns over injuries in English rugby following new statistics released by the Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project (PRISP), which monitors injury risk in Premiership Clubs and the England senior team.
The overall incidence of match injury (the likelihood of a player sustaining an injury) during the 2015-16 season was 62 every 1,000 hours of play.
The most commonly reported injury was concussion, which counted for 25 per cent of all injuries suffered in the Premiership, while the mean severity of a concussion was 13 days.
Meanwhile, the incidence of training injuries fell for the second consecutive season in 2015-16, but the average severity remained high at 30 days.
