Ropati, Hardaker do we need a player to end their life in a wheelchair before the RFL take appropriate action.

So dangerous play doesn't necessarily need to be dealt with by suspension?


So if the ref see's nothing wrong.....and are you on the disciplinary panel and hoping for a double shift?



How can you tell Chase was deliberate and Peacock was accidental?

Should of been a longer ban, they should of took his previous assaults into account,like the assault on his fellow New Zealander Ropati last season

Keep fishing.....

You must be joking, there were far worse tackles at the weekend.

Still not sure what everyone's getting so excited about.

Most sensible thing I've read would be for players and coaches to be told not to comment on incidents until disciplinary. Ideally I'd like all sports people (especially Rio Ferdinand) to be banned from using twitter. Zac Hardaker has not covered himself in glory with his social media use, but unfortunately he's hardly unique there.

Big-daft-lads-who-were-only-good-at-sport-at-school plus an instant audience for the first thing that pops into their heads is never a winning combination.

On field, one solution would be for people to stop using shoulder charges. They're lazy, unnecessary and poor technique in my view. It's a view which you can find on the Leeds forum pre-season in case you're worried that I'm being inconsistent.

sensible post what are you doing on an RL forum.

Rangi needs to be careful in the future re tackling techniqe. And whether it is fair or not he needs to be a bit more careful. Good player who needs to work hard now to improve his repuatationl

Fair assessment, though I wonder what McDermott's excuse might be.

As it happens I was at rla meetingrl last night where this issue was quite a hot topic. I doubt Ian Millward would have been such a forthright speaker if he suspected that anyone would quote him on a forum the next day, so I won't do that. Instead here's my 'overall impressions'...

I got the overall impression that Rangi was found guilty despite the production of photographic, video and audio evidence which strongly suggested he wasn't. I don't feel comfortable elaborating further, but I did get the overall impression that our coach was just plain shocked at the way this issue blew up and was subsequently handled, particularly with respect to the panel's judgement. I may be very wide of the mark of course, but that's the overall impression I got.

I also got the overall impression that there will be no appeal. Not because there's any acceptance of guilt, but simply because there's absolutely no point. To appeal you should have new evidence, but if the panel isn't going to give the evidence you presented the first time any consideration, then there's just no point bothering to appeal and risk making things worse. That's not a quote, just my overall impression.

What I can say with absolute certainty though is that any residual faith I may have had in the RFL's due process was completely evaporated by the time the meeting closed.

Watching the game footage back, I find myself reinforcing the view that it was lazy, sloppy technique, not malice. I don't like those type of tackles, but since they remain legal I don't really see why its any worse in the disciplinary's eyes than any other accidental high shot. It's a brand of lazy, sloppy 'tackling technique' (I use the tackle and technique clauses very loosely here) that is pretty common, so I'm not aiming that as a criticism against Rangi Chase in particular.

In that sense it was a bit reminiscent of the challenge Danny McGuire got a ban for in the play-offs last year (the extension from 1 match to 2 being a reflection of previous form) so not very inconsistent.

On that basis, I didn't really think McGuire should have been banned (although he was always going to be under the disciplinary procedures so I had no real complaint) and I don't think Chase should have been either.

On a more positive note, how good was the play for your 2nd try. 2011 vintage Chase rather than the pretty disappointing 2012 version. The league as a whole is a better product for players like him in form, so long may it continue.

Not sure what McDermott actually said that's got your back up. He said he'd like to see it again. To me the way Hardaker fell (regardless of cause) suggested that he was out of it for a moment or so.

I've also, in fairness, yet to see any evidence that Chase isn't guilty of what he was found guilty of. You can see above my view of whetehr I think that what he was found guilty of merits a ban, but the reality is that it's a charge that usually results in one these days. I can't see where the disciplinary have been inconsistent with previous rulings actually.

I would question why bans are handed out when offences are not penalised in the game, but not when they are. That's an odd way of doing things if you ask me, but not inconsistent as it's always done that way. In a more logical system, Peacock would have a one match ban. Personally I'd rather neither incident were banned. But that's not to say the disciplinary is biased or not self-consistent.

McDermott said that Rangi "clearly knocked the kid out".
He clearly didn't, and AFAIK McDermott has yet to retract or apologise for his accusation.

Either way it's done with now.. certain individuals have (in my view) got away with fitting a player up and getting him banned and, as I said, I doubt there'll be any appeal. All we can hope for is that if Bradford or Catalans manage to finish above Leeds this season, it'll be by the two points they'll probably now get as a gimmie after Cas have been denied their playmaker.

Hardaker was attended to by an experienced and trained doctor. as is standard procedure for such an incident. That doctor will have performed the standard concussion tests as they are obliged to and advised the Leeds coaching staff of the results. The Leeds coaching staff then withdrew Hardaker and he is a doubt for this week. The Leeds coaching staff have advised he was knocked out.

Why do you think you would be better at diagnosing head injuries from a video recording than the trained and experienced doctor who is providing medical care?

The semantics of whether he was knocked out or not are pointless.
He was knocked to the ground by a flow to the head (Whether it was Chase impact or impact on the floor)
The doc would still treat it the same way whether knocked unconscious.

For me, Chase was reckless and has previous form. You can only use the "I didn't mean it" excuse so many times.

And, although a nice gesture, he gave himself up by going over to see if he was ok. If it was a normal tackle he wouldn't have done that. He must have known there was head contact himself to do that.

So for me 2 games is enough.
The french assault was way more than 4 games though! But that's another thread on it's own.

Sigh. Ok...

Are we talking about concussion here? Or are we talking about being knocked out (ie: being unconscious)? We need to be clear because you seem to be equating the two, which is erroneous. The video footage freely available to anyone with a sky or tivo box clearly shows that at no point was Hardaker 'knocked out'. Concussed I have no quarrel with, but then so was Rangi, as a result of the taller man (Hardaker) falling forwards after an initial impact with another player and clashing heads with the incoming tackler (Chase). In fact I have the 'overall impression' that evidence may even exist suggesting Chase was at least as affected by the clash as Hardaker, but stupidly managed to stay on his feet instead of dropping to the floor like a sack of spuds and rolling around holding his head like an Edwardian princess mid-swoon.

My point is that McDermott, who was clearly insinuating something while trying to choose his words carefully, simply failed to do so. He used a highly suggestive and specific phrase which was shown to be wrong after the event. In itself not too damaging but for some in the media then taking his words and suggesting other things which were equally inaccurate (both feet in the air eh, Terry O'Connor?). In my view it would do both McDermott and the shock jockeys who clung to his mistaken assertions a little credit if they did the decent thing and admitted they were wrong. But I won't hold my breath.

It honestly doesn’t matter what you think you can see on Sky plus. You don’t know if Hardaker was knocked out or not. Whereas a trained medical professional advised the club he was. For you then to start arguing semantics about one injury being more acceptable than the other is simply idiotic, god alone knows why you think that we should be sat here thinking “oh chase didn’t knock him out, he only gave him concussion, that’s not too bad”.

The fact that you then go on to say that the use of the word ‘knocked out’ was some pejorative linguistic voodoo by Mcdermott to try and influence the disciplinary committee is absolute nonsense. Especially when the actual, clinical diagnosis of Hardakers injury is the much more scary sounding mild traumatic brain injury.

Im not sure Disco’s diagnosis by tivo is going to be a long lasting clinical tool.

But now we have Hardaker, McDermott, and Terry O’connor in on this persecution of the poor little drunken violent criminal with a poor disciplinary record. Is there anyone else in on the conspiracy?