Deaths of 3 rugby players in Malaysia expose brutal side of heatwave

The deaths in quick succession of three rugby players in Malaysia have put renewed focus on the risks of competing in extreme heat and humidity, as climate change pushes temperatures higher across Southeast Asia.
On May 23, prop Azlan Azhari, playing for Kedah’s state team against Johor in the 2026 Agong Cup, a local interstate tournament, collapsed about five minutes after scoring a try. The 22-year-old was stretchered off the field and taken to hospital where he was placed in an induced coma but died two days later. The cause of death given was heatstroke, dehydration and organ failure.
Adam Putra Syahril, 21, passed away on May 23 after collapsing during a Penang Sukma rugby training session, while earlier last month, on May 10, former national team scrum-half Mohamad Khairul Abdillah Ramli, 34, suffered an aortic rupture on the bus home after an Agong Cup match.
While rugby players are accustomed to physical injury and the game’s collisions, primarily incurred through tackling, have become more violent as the size and speed of its athletes increase, the trio’s untimely deaths have raised questions about whether further adjustments should be made in countries like Malaysia where the weather is particularly unforgiving.
Rugby players in Malaysia often contend with temperatures north of 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), as well as high humidity levels. That means additional strain for athletes, according to Yuri Hosokawa, associate professor at Waseda University’s Faculty of Sports Sciences. If the humidity is high, players “can’t really offset the heat gain through sweat”, she said. “In Asia, we struggle with that.”
World Rugby published guidelines for managing the risk of heat illness in 2025, which include a “graded intervention framework” that recommends increasing cooling, fluid intake and breaks in play depending on the conditions. But global warming means the situation has “changed drastically in the past few years”, Hosokawa said.
Malaysia is one of Asia’s bigger markets for rugby, with about 38,000 registered players as of 2018, and the sport has grown in popularity over the past few years, driven by sustained investment in school and youth programmes and elite boarding-school rugby competitions.

Organisers have increasingly positioned rugby as a pathway to national representation, helping attract a growing number of young players, and the country has also drawn on talent from the rugby-rich Pacific nations, particularly Fiji, adding to the sport’s speed and physical intensity.
The impact of tackling, both in terms of immediate injury risk and long-term health complications, has been heavily scrutinised. In 2016, a group of 70 doctors and academics called for a ban on full-contact tackling in rugby matches played in UK and Irish schools, arguing that injuries sustained in the “high-impact collision sport” can cause lifelong consequences.
In 2017, World Rugby, the global governing body, redefined what constitutes an illegal tackle by taking a zero-tolerance approach to head-to-head contact. Last month, it unveiled a multi-year plan for shaping the game’s future that highlighted the continued growth of T1 Rugby – a non-contact equivalent – as a major initiative.
But another main factor in injury prevention is acclimatisation. The 2025 World Rugby guidelines state that players need between seven and 10 days of consecutive moderate-to-high exercise in a hot climate to adapt.
“If it’s prolonged aerobic exercise, then performance is compromised,” Julien Periard, a director at the University of Canberra Research Institute for Sport and Exercise, said.

The higher a player’s core temperature rises, the greater the risks, ranging from relatively benign things like muscle cramps to more serious issues such as internal heat injury. Players are at risk of fatal heatstroke at core temperatures of above 40.5 degrees, Periard said.
Adam, the 21-year-old player who represented Penang in the Sukma Games for young athletes, was fastidious in his preparation, his coach said.
After being dropped earlier in his playing career, the sports science student began precision-planning his food intake, and was set to be selected for the competition in August, according to Azmudin Adam, head coach of Sukma Penang rugby sevens team. He was “very disciplined”, Azmudin said.
Malaysia Rugby secretary general Mohd Fahmy Abdul Jalil said all the procedures prescribed by World Rugby for dealing with high temperatures were followed, including water breaks every 20 minutes.
“People ask, is it because of the heat or the weather,” he said. “It’s a shock for us.”