Quote: Jack Burton "I can't say I've seen all the cards, but the red card in the Hull game on Friday is the only one I've seen that I've found questionable, but head to head contact is the form of head contact that causes the most damage, so it's the form of head contact that the RFL wants to reduce the most, accidental, or not, so I can understand, to a point, but most contacts like that go unnoticed anyway unless a player goes down injured, and unfortunately they can't determine the force of the impact until they get the data from the mouth guard at the MRP, so I think they should just send both players for an automatic HIA and then determine if a charge is warranted at the MRP.
Regarding your point on just enforcing the rules as they are, you could argue that's what they're doing, but to me, the issue is they've known about the potential for increased risk of brain injuries in RL for over a decade, but instead of doing something about it then, they've allowed stand up tackles and higher initial contact to become ubiquitous to a point where players are going to have to completely change their tackle techniques, and coaches are going to have to completely change how they coach the game, it's going to completely change the game, and it will take time to adjust, but they are full-time professionals, it shouldn't be beyond them to do it. It should be something that they've already started doing because next season will only get tougher.'"
I have to say (somewhat grudgingly) that last nights WCC tended to support a lot of the points you've been making. Lots of excellent tackling technique on show and scarcely anything round the head. My big worry is that next year will be a completely different and far, far less watchable ball game. Memories of the Academy trial games last year still bring me out in hives.