It's sort of crept up on us (wrestle that is) and is now an integral and in my opinion completely detrimental part of the game.

Players learning how to defend properly and having more structure in defence has made it a different game but not neccessarily a worse or better sport. Its just not it used to be and thats how it should be, the game should evolve.

A quick PTB puts the onus on the side with the ball to do things, well, quickly. This favours sides best at handling and best at running and is the game at its most enjoyable for me. I don't actually mind the wrestle too much but multiple tacklers just lying on involves zero skill and less entertainment.

Theres a lot of skill in the wrestling techniques players are using. We just dont appreciate it enough cos it doesnt lead to fast flowing rugby.

Personally i find the NRL too fast and teams can just roll down the field and it bores me to tears so theres a balance to be struck.

The game is just different now and in 10 years time will be different again.

When we had a quicker play the ball people complained it was too fast and there were too many 'blow out scores'. I actually think RL fans in general just like to whinge. The game is too fast, then it's too slow. We need more players in the NRL to improve the national team, we need to stop the player drain to the NRL. We need to change the structure...we need to change the structure again. We need to scrap promotion and relegation, promotion and relegation is part our sporting DNA. We need to expand the game, the expansion clubs bring nothing to game.

saints v leeds in 08. thick mud, driving rain, one out football.
what a game

They were great (Leon Pryce was such a pr!ck - nearly taking Gareth Ellis's head off and crippling his brother simultaneously).

I watched Leeds -Widnes from '89 the other night, The Moriarty elbow game (I was there). That was quick, very solid defence (5m PTB) and aggressive running. I had forgotten why Moriarty was "upset". The first time he carried the ball he got absolutely tw@ed by four Leeds "tacklers". I think Martin Offiah was punched in the face every time he was tackled.

This game always makes me smile when it is mentioned as on the Saturday night before the game I was in the Town Hall Tavern and quite a few of the Leeds players were also in there too,a few of the boys were clearly a bit worse for ware,But non more so than Craig Izzard who was absolutely 5hit faced and could barely walk come 11pm

Fast forward to game day and I met my pals in the South Stand bar and felt confident in telling them that there was no way that Izzard would play as he was probably still p1ssed even now.
Izzard went onto having a storming game and also ted Joe Grima too...How wrong was I?

The Moriarty hit on Hughie was sickening to see and reminded me of the time that Dannatt did the same to Hanley

Izzard was fantastic. Proper forward.

Wish we had a back rower like him now.

I'd be interested to see how we go defensively this year- JJB mentioned in an interview that he's been asked to look at some defensive stuff. He was saying the game has become dominated by wrestle techniques over here following Michael Maguire's success but he was wanting to look at it in a different way and see if there was ways the "old school" contact based defence could make a return.

Watched the Regal Trophy one v Carlisle earlier. Awful...truly awful.

Did we really used to watch rugby like that every week lol.

Goodness me.

Watched the 70-0 against Wigan earlier. Dunneman was such an underrated player.

It's also probably the worst Wigan line up I think I've ever seen.

Agree. First time I've re-watched it, we didn't actually play anything like as well as I'd imagined we had. Wigan really were bad. Didn't they go down 75 0 to Saints only a short time after?

Some really good stuff on Rugby League Cares Facebook site at the moment . Watched 1998 GB v Australia yesterday. The Dave Hadfield ' up and over ' documentary was great too