@ said:
It was simple, and it can be simple again. Set the rules and adhere to the rules or you are penalised.
It has become complicated because custodians of the game have made it that way. Example:
It is not a forward pass because it went backwards out of his hands (sure it floated forward by four metres but that doesn't matter). The rule WAS - if the ball goes in front of you … it is a forward pass, end of story.
Changing the rule opens up grey areas and interpretations by different individuals. Hence inconsistency.
Most of the inconsistency in our game now comes from these new rule interpretations which is making the game a laughing stock and what most supporters are complaining about.
It was a simple game - pretty much for simple/uncomplicated blue collar workers. Since the formation of the NRL it has been made a complicated game - you almost need an academic degree to work out the rules and interpretations. What the NRL need to do is, give our game back and stop the rot.
Well this is the part where we have to agree to disagree.
I work in an industry where it is my job to set rules, policies, protocols and ensure they are followed to the letter. I can tell you from 20 years experience that no matter how hard you try, no matter how clear you try to be, a significant number of people will continue to misunderstand, forget or, at worse, intentionally ignore a policy. It's just human nature, there is no perfect system of policing whether it be sport, the law - always interpretations.
League is not a simple game. Maybe in your head it is, but when you write it down on paper it becomes fairly complicated. As I already noted, there are 60+ pages of rules - rules for knock ones, passes, high tackles, tripping, stripping, wrestling, play the balls, touchlines, tries, goals, shepherding, in-play kicking, offsides, in-goal infringements, concussions, blood bin, sin bin, interchange, penalty options, scrums, corner posts, grounding, kick defence, obstructions… etc. etc. If you think that is simple then gee whiz you have a superior intellect than I do. And try explaining our simple sport in 5 minutes to a new person, such that they understand the sport completely in that 5 minutes.
Rugby league is a simplification of what is a more technical sport, but it's still fairly complicated as sports go. And the better teams get at testing the rules, the more professional they become, the thinner the line becomes between legal and illegal, and at some point a human needs to make a decision. This will always result in disagreements, from 1908 to 2017 and beyond, it will never stop until the game is played by and refereed by robots.
And whilst I agree the custodians have introduced some grey areas into the game, they've more or less been forced to do it due to the way teams play, or the changes in technology. You never used to have to worry about crusher tackles, until they were invented. Nor did anyone worry about concussions until it became evident of the career-long risk to players. Obstructions were rarely a problem because teams didn't know how to run complicated attacking structures with blockers.
In fact you show me anything in the whole wide world that can be policed today just the way it was in 1908 or even 1980, show me anything in the world that has become more simple, more straightforward than it used to be.
It mostly boils down to the level of video coverage in the modern game. You can't have both a system where you make everything on-field black and white, but then allow the coverage to show 10 different angles in slow-motion. The two aspects need to meet somewhere in the middle, and the policy makers are trying as best they can to use the technology whilst not being a slave to the technology. Anyone who is a policy-maker will have some understanding of what that means and how complicated it truly is.
Think of all the non-tries and errors that have been correctly picked up by the video ref. People only seem to keep a tally of the negative issues, the calls that they feel were incorrect. But what about all the apparent tries that were shown to be not so - feet on the line, dropped balls etc. We had at least a dozen of those just last weekend, e.g. Latrell Mitchell dropping the ball over the line when he appeared to have scored - correct calls using the available technology.
Your example of a forward pass - I am not aware of the rule ever having changed??? Nor the interpretation having changed either, never heard of that. The problem with forward passes is physics - someone posted a really good youtube video on here a few months back and I suggest you go looking for it, talking about apparent forward motion when passing. Without giving a physics lesson, any player at speed will impart that speed on the football, such that a pass in a backwards motion technically does move forward at the speed the player was travelling (conservation of momentum). So long as the runner continues his momentum, to the eye it looks fine. But if he gets hit in a tackle, his momentum stops dead whilst the ball continues to move with the imparted momentum. Depending on where you are standing this may look like a forward pass, though the relative movement of the ball was not forward.
The physics of forwards passes has obviously never changed, so it will always be a grey area subject to the movements of players and the relative position of the referee. Part of the reason why video refs don't rule on forward passes, because it's not currently possible to make that call if you are not physically on the field.
