The only sensible reason to move it forward would be that then both HKR and Salford play their league games on Friday the 5th of June. They then don't play again until Sunday the 14th of June which gives them a 9 day gap to squeeze in the match they have to play against each other due to being in the earlier round of the cup.

However you'd think that would've been announced by now only being a few weeks away in order to organise the fixture.......however it is the RFL so wouldn't surprise me if they did just announce a HKR v Salford midweek match at the last minute.

Hull KR haven't asked for it moving. Cas did.

Hull KR initially refused their request, then Cas appealed to the RFL on "player welfare" grounds and the RFL told Hull KR that they had to move it whether they wanted to or not.

It's ridiculous. Seems some rules only apply to certain clubs. Peeved off doesn't even come close!!

What about "spectator welfare", it's about time the RFL and the clubs stopped taking supporters for granted and realise that without speccies there's no game. Season ticket holders at KR buy season tickets because they know home games will normally be played on a Sunday, why should they be inconvenienced because that moaning get Powell decides he's not happy. This player welfare is becoming a right load of sh**e. If the players don't want to play then get back to the building site or digging holes in the wind and rain and let some lads that are happy to play whenever take their place. As Jim Royle would say "player welfare my a**e ".

I found the answer in your question.

Undoubtedly. The issue is why it took them four months from the fixtures being announced to deciding they wanted to change, and why when Hull KR said "no thank you" did the RFL feel the need to intervene on Cas's behalf having been responsible for scheduling the short turnaround in the first place?

This isn't the 80's.
The players are huge and massively powerful.
Players are playing with often multiple fractures, sometimes of the spine.
Players have proportionately lower bone density and less fat protection than the average person.
A Rugby League game results in significant skeletal muscle damage and requires a minimum of 5 days recovery between games.

To say "player welfare is a right load of sh**e" is either actively wanting players to be injured, possibly seriously, or naive in the extreme.



That said, this particular cockup is entirely of the RFL's own making.

"This isn't the 80's", obvious statement, but irrelevant. Players playing with "multiple fractures" is drama queen territory to say the least. If they are playing injured, the clubs need to take a look at themselves, JJB playing at Wigan with his shoulder "hanging by a thread" springs to mind. Nobody should be playing with a serious injury, that is why clubs have 25 man squads. "Less fat protection", get real, they're wrapped in the biggest layers of muscle you will ever see on a professional sportsman, no fat available. I have had operations on my back, it's down to the job, I chose it, I don't tell my customers I will have 5 days off every time I've had a grueller at work. As for the " lower bone density" theory, lifting weights in a controlled environment with a top class conditioner means they probably have better bone density than old Jack the plumber with dodgy knees that pays his hard earned to come and watch along with nearly 18,000 others on Easter Monday. They do Easter once a year and maybe have a 5 day turnaround on maybe a couple more occasions each season. It is their job, they chose it, if they don't like it let someone else earn over a grand a week for playing a sport they love. No job comes without physical consequences, ask any builder, miner, plumber, gardener or farmer. Do they all want a minimum 5 days rest between a days graft ? RL players are very well remunerated compared to Joe Bloggs, and Joe Bloggs pays their wages, so if they don't like playing when the fans look forward to games it's time they started looking in the Job Centre for another vocation.

Tbh I think it needs looking at just how many injuries are happening nowadays. Go back even 5 years and one or two teams could claim to have a crippling injury list throughout their season. Nowadays it seems like every single team in SL this season has already had a tough run with injuries with several missing.

I think the key reason is that they're getting tackled by/run at by fitter/stronger/bigger athletes and it's taking a big toll.

Also players are being developed like thoroughbred horses and are susceptible to an amazing amount of muscle tears where no contact is involved. The wrestle mania is another sure fire way to clog up the medical room. This is down to the RFL and their naive drive to increase popularity by disregarding basic rules to attract the "invisible" new wave of supporters.

Multiple vertebral fractures were discovered in 37% of rugby players in a recent study.
In total 120 vertebral fractures were found in 51 of the 95 players studied.



There are effectively 7 positions in RL
Muscle doesn't protect your bones like fat does. The necessity for players to be fitter than ever before means they have less fat than ever before.


It's established by recent studies that players have proportionately lower bone density than the average person. Rugby players have higher bone density than the average person. But their muscle mass is far higher than the average person. They have a disproportionate amount of muscle compared to bone.


Name me a time in your job you had to withstand the equivalent of being in a 60 mph car crash 20 times in under 2 hours.

The microphone thing that Peacock wore really brought home those impacts. Couldn't pay me to do that week in, week out.

Yep. What brought it home to me was last year I was told by Jason Davidson at a coach development session the force and amount of impacts the players have to withstand in a game.

Now I'm not discounting how tough it was to play in the past, especially as part timers, but I think a lot of people massively underestimate the stress on the body that the modern game has.
A few weeks back Schoey said on Yorkshire Radio (I think) that he once played 3 games in 3 days. Now that was tough and too much back then, but it's impossible to do now. The body simply can't take it.

Schoey might have been knackered after those 3 games in 3 days, and probably a bit battered and bruised. But I doubt he (or the forwards) suffered from severe skeletal muscle damage, which is what happens after just 1 game of RL these days.

I still, and always think, that even if you leave aside the issue of safety (and we shouldn't - any workplace should be made as safe as possible and increased turnaround between games is one obvious and entirely feasible way of doing it), the spectators don't really win from being supplied with more games.

Can the players play on Friday and Monday? Yes, of course they can, and they do. Can they produce the same level of athletic (and mental) performance in both games? No. I watched several games over Easter. The second batch of fixtures were clearly lacking in a bit of quality in most cases.

I think the issue is that, when you compare it to amateur games, or days of yore, we now see ever more finely tuned machines playing at the elite level. We use full time coaching, thousands of quids worth of technology, monitoring and the latest science and nutrition. And we do it all to produce athletes who are micro-specialised to fulfil their role in a game of RL every week. In any industry when you micro-specialise you lose something in the breadth of performance. I think that's what we do with professional RL players, and that's why I am not sure it makes sense to expect them to do the same short turnarounds their part time predecessors did.

Safety-wise, we produce bigger, heavier athletes, who are also faster and more agile. The effect that has on the speed and force of the collisions is noticeable. And there are parts of the body that are not as easy to train as the big driving muscles and the cardio-respiratory system. Things like brains and their casing, spines and to some extent bones in general don't keep up with the pace of development, but they still get dragged into the collisions.

It's a dangerous game, I respect that, so do the players. But the game has to be responsible for not making it more dangerous than it has to be, and the fans will benefit from getting fully fit participants out on the field more often.