An idea for policing the ruck

[jirskyr]

I'm jack of the randomness of ruck penalties from dropped balls when players get up from a tackle, the ball trickles free and both defender and attacker raises their arms in disbelief, ref randomly blows a penalty.

I love the new rule where if a player offloads after held is called, they give the ball back, because it's mostly due to unheard calls.

Why not apply the same approach to ruck inconsistencies? If the ball comes loose from jostling, and it's not clear what happened just give it back to the attacker and play the ball. This eliminates any incentive for the attacker to release the footy if the ball is being worked, and eliminates the incentive for the defender to sneakily work on the footy.

I don't imagine it could be abused by defenders, a true strip is very hard to hide and should still be penalised.

This would reduce penalty counts and address the piggy-back effect where teams are hugely advantaged for what is essentially a random penalty.

 

[Fade_To_Black]

That is a great idea. Don't know why the knobheads who run the game can't be smart enough to introduce something along those lines, it would stop all of the BS that goes on in the ruck. Fantastic idea, maybe u should email the NRL with it and see what their response is.

 

[tig_prmz]

good idea. if the attacker is dumb enough to lose the ball, then take away their advantage of a fast PTB by making them play it again.

 

[Doc_Tiger]

Not sure on that one, but I'd would lie to see penalties for moving off the mark. That drives me crazy