The connection just shows that the NRL and referees don't enforce the rules that they themselves make , unless it suits them and then mainly when they have a three week crackdown. They are so slack on the rules of the game, and deserve to be woken up on a lot of aspects of the game.
I know that this is not directly connected to that lifting tackle, except to show that the NRL aren't prepared to step in and get anything out of the game, whether it's lifting, shoulder charges, head high tackles, choke holds,deliberate offside tactics near the line. Wrestling, forward passes .. voluntary tackles….. the list goes on.
They need to have the cleaners put through them and have a real look at the mess that the game has become.
It really must be a great game to survive the people who make the decisions
Yep, one only has to look at one set of six to see just how often the rules are ignored, with half of them not being played with the foot alone, before even thinking about offside or defensive technique.
Sorry, I have to admit , they did manage to get rid of punching.
That's 1 out of about 20 things that need an overhaul.
Think you've gone a little overboard there.
NRL are not going to outlaw lifting tackles, because most of them are legal. They've made that pretty clear already since the MacKinnon tackle. In fact, in my opinion, if you remove lifting then the game becomes even more of a wrestle because defenders are afraid of getting pinged for dumping an attacker, so they hold and roll and wrestle.
For shoulder charges, they have definitely gotten rid of that. There is the occasional interpretative hurdle about exactly what is a true tackle attempt and what is not, but 95% of shoulder charges are penalised and, without having incidence data, they have all but disappeared from the game. I actually wish they did not remove the shoulder charge, but it's about player safety and not my viewing pleasure.
NRL clearly do police head-high tackles, almost too much to the point that any contact even a light slap results in a penalty. It's probably a little too far on the side of caution.
Choke holds definitely get penalised, let's not be silly here. Let us not allow ourselves to think of one or two prominent exceptions to the rule to blind us that 95% of all illegal conduct is penalised fairly strictly, and only the occasional example gets through.
Forward passes, what are you talking about? Have I missed something, is there some plague of intentionally forward passes going around that nobody does anything about?
Wrestling is part of the game, you just have to live with that. A tackle is a form of wrestle and you cannot outlaw tackling obviously. It's just that some teams have become exceptionally good at testing the boundaries of what is an acceptable wrestle, and it becomes a very fine line to allow or penalise. You can't just outlaw the wrestle and it's insane to think it is a new facet to the game - it's an old ploy that teams have just become very professional about.
Voluntary tackles… well there are certainly some that go unpunished. But really, is this a big deal? Will the game be improved by a strict crack-down on the occasional dive? Mostly diving players get a nice shoulder to the ribs anyway, so it's penalised as a weak play.
The problem with certain fans is they want to eliminate grey areas from the game - this thing is legal and that is not. And they think the administration can just wave a wand and make everyone agree about how to interpret technicalities.
Bill Harrigan came in as ref's boss a few years ago and tried to do what people had been asking - break down the game into a series of very technical assessments to eliminate the grey areas, reduce the impact of personal interpretation. People were sick of one ref taking one approach, then the next week seeing something else. In other words, he gave the refs a complicated set of guidelines which ultimately saw an increase in decisions referred to the video, because only the video ref had the capacity to assess those guidelines with the aid of replays.
But then people realised they hated this - rugby league is not a game for robots, there are unlimited variations on what can happen in a play and you need a human's judgement and common sense to decide what is fair and what is not. This was especially true of the obstruction which became a real mess when you tried to break it down into a series of complicated assessments.
So they repealed most of Bill's guidelines and went with a more "common sense" approach for refs, mandating a ref's call before sending a decision to the video. They removed many of the complications around assessing an obstruction, really only keeping the "outside shoulder" idea for a block runner.
But people were still shirty about differing interpretation match-to-match, week-to-week, so NRL spent a few mill to set up the bunker - at the very least you'd have the same people making the video calls every week.
But lo, people hate the bunker too because they still manage to come up with the odd decision that the majority of fans don't agree with. So-called "howlers".
But take a step back folks, this is a fairly complicated game policed by human beings. Unless you want to take it down the road of rugby union where there is a complicated rule for every moment of every situation, and refs are blowing stupid, unnecessary and controversial penalties, and teams are slotting penalty goals all match for 3 points, then we have what is a pretty decent alternative.
Or we just go back to the 80s, where the laws were fairly flexible and refs let a lot of stuff go, and the video never got involved and replays were uncommon. But really, in this modern world of social media, snapchat, youtube and smart phones is anyone really going to be happy with a loosely policed product, where we overlook a long list of regular mistakes for the benefit of a more "fun" spectacle?
Woops that became a bit of a rant.
