I'm not sure what you expect Cummins to do to instil the required "mongrel" into his players? Can you actually coach that? Are you advocating the Tony Fisher coaching approach of "get stuck into 'em or I'll flatten you".

I think you need players with that mongrel in them to begin with. Our pack is a little short of it since Elima left and the backrow is weaker as a result. That said we don't miss his ill discipline. The game has also moved on since when Tigs and his peers like Ray French were playing and you can't get away with reacting violently to aggression.

Really? Well, i'd define a whinge as an unjustified complaint. So let's see
Whilst on some occasions something like that may happen, because refs are only human, not automatons, I don't at all agree that in general that is true. To present it as a general universal truth is simply wrong. But if it did happen, then the fans of the team on the wrong side of it would have a "justifiable complaint", not a "whinge", because their team would be being treated differently from the opposition, when it should be the same for both.


The complaints here have been mostly about Roby, though. And if you are seriously saying that Wigan are coached to grapple around the head and face then I'm sorry, whilst I don't believe it, if it was true, I don't want my team ever using that as a tactic. But if Wigan were using this tactic (coached or not) and not getting penalised for it, then to complain about the referee failing to deal with it would be a "justifiable complaint", not a "whinge".


As someone who has watched, er, several years of rugby league, I must admit I laughed out loud at that one. "A new high"? You're kidding, right? I could name you a dozen sides off the top of my head that would have had the current Wigan team for breakfast, and had a bloody good laugh at the suggestion that they had taken nastiness to a new level. As for a "team of enforcers" - Franny Cummins inherited what he inherited, and many of them are just young lads. He hasn't "filled the team" with anything.


More steel is always welcome but I don't see how you could argue we are getting a reputation for "being a bit soft". Prior to kick off our "soft" team was 3rd in the table, and yes I'd have loved us to win but rather than "soft" I'm thinking that bearing in mind where we were a few short months ago it is a bloody miracle that we are at the level we are. My feeling is that the only reputation we're getting at the moment is that of a team which is surprisingly good, and playing surprisingly attractive and expansive rugby, and taking into account our circumstances is admired by practically everyone.

Anyway, we are a work-in-progress, and at a very early stage at that, and we may not progress much in the next year or two simply due to lack of funds, but I actually am back to loving going to the games, because I love the way we try to play, and I appreciate the effort and the fantastic team spirit. What I would say is that when we and Saints ruled the roost between us for all those years, the rugby was fantastic, but neither we nor they ever had a "team of enforcers" and so I don't think that it is a necessity.

Link to this report..?

Interview with BBC Radio Leeds.

Aren't grapple tackles illegal?

So I was led to believe.

I was not suggesting Wigan are a dominant side (yet), nor did I intend to imply that it is a team simply being dominant in an individual game. There have been 3 dominant teams in my time watching RL – those who have sustained a superiority over all others for a number of years – Wigan, Bradford & Saints. Even though Leeds have obviously dominated recent GFs they haven’t dominated throughout the season. Although Sinfield does rightly use his regal status to respectfully challenge officials to his full abilities.
I wouldn’t want to coach my players to strangle others nor dive at their knees while held to an extent that is likely to cause them permanent injury. But I wouldn’t let a team physically overwhelm mine. I remember Widnes physically dominating Brian Smith’s Hull side in some final around 1990 (Premiership?) – he changed the team attitude & make up in the off-season to ensure it didn’t happen again. It is possible to change the mental approach & attitude of your collective team, though individual players can be beyond even the likes of Smith.
Wigan inbred hillbillies were all predicting their young & relatively lightweight pack would get outmuscled before the start of the season. Wane has obviously coached an aggressive mentality; there is the thug like McIlorum to go with the carefully calculated high shots of O’brotherinlaw. Allied with a high intensity, in your face defence, he has made the best of his charges with a number of average SL standard players in his squad. I am not sure that type of aggression comes naturally to Cummins, nor his assistants. I didn’t say you are soft, but you that you might get a reputation, time will tell.
Bradford didn’t have a team of enforcers? Vaikona, Les, Vagana, Lowes, McDermott, Peacock, Anderson, Fielden, Naylor all tried to physically & mentally dominate their opponents. I can’t think of many top teams who had a dominant forward pack to give their backs the freedom to run riot. Ironically Bradford were often accused of having no Plan B, when their steamrolling style of play wasn’t successful.

I thought Wigan played played very well indeed and showed why they are top of the league. They also played the referee far better than we did. I'll never understand why, when he was allowing Wigan to lie on and mess around, our players seemed determined to allow Wigan a clean ruck as they did in the first half. Clearly FC straightened that out at half time and we used the same tactics, resulting in the game being much closer, though it has to be said Wigan had the game in the pocket after 40 minutes so maybe dropped off the intensity a little.

I have to say if didn't make for a very good game though, with neither side getting clean ball. Roby really is an awful referee and nowhere near ready for SL. The number of forward passes, high tackles and general laying on and messing around was atrocious and it came from both sides and it will only increase if it isn't stamped on by the official and Roby either didn't spot it or hadn't the confidence to give it it. Our discipline did drop a bit at the the end unfortunately, though I guess this was as much to do with tiredness after all the tackling we'd done, rather than anything else.

Wigan are a class above though and it's hard to see beyond them being favourites for the title at the end of the season.

I think it must be very difficult for a referee (especially one as inexperienced as Roby) to find a balance between blowing up at every PTB and letting things slide to ensure a bit of flow in the game.

It's made particularly hard when teams try every trick in the book to slow down the PTB as much as is possible. Some take it to extremes but all teams will push it as far as they're allowed and some refs allow more than others.

What frustrates me is the inconsistency from one week to the next on how long is allowed at each tackle. When an attacker dominates the collision the tacklers must get off quicker yet last week we saw extra defenders come in to deliberately slow things by hanging onto arms and legs, not rolling away or deliberately lying in the way of the man playing the ball to further slow things down. It's so obvious what's going on.

I don't want to see a game of dummy half scooting when everyone has to immediately roll away but I would like to see the PTB cleaned up a bit and the wrestlemania done away with. It makes for an awful spectacle.

Perhaps removing the interpretation aspect to the rule would be the best way forward?

The ref calls a tackle then begins a 3 second count. If a defender has not cleared the ruck by 3, then it's a penalty for laying on. That way you have a standard PTB speed and you remove the advantage of teams who use spoiling tactics to slow down the PTB

I'm not saying it's not a decent idea but even that would be open to so much interpretation & manipulation. I can just imagine the threads accusing ref's of counting to 3 slower for Wigan than the losing team. Personally I very rarely see a game as a relative neutral where I think it has been spoiled by holding down, there's maybe one or two instances where the defenders could have cleared the ruck easier but it is split seconds & in the context of the game is largely irrelevant.

I'm really enjoying the NRL coverage on Premier. If you have the time, you can watch every game in full. Their PTB seems to work like a charm, in every game. I can't think of a single game where I have felt the game has been spoiled or slowed down by tacklers pitching camp on a tackled opponent. Whereas in [isome[/i SL games, (and leaving out of the equation Bulls games, where obviously a bias may cloud judgement) on Sky, the holding down and delaying tactics at the PTB can quickly become really annoying to watch.

Why the difference?

In the NRL the general overall position is that tacklers do their thing, then jump off the tackle and the game flows on. They seem to be, across the board, fit enough to cope with the extra-quick shuttle runs this produces. If we played Aus under that interpretation then IMHO we would be murdered as we couldn't cope with the speed of game. Yet there have been a handful of Sky games which have been played at similar pace, and under similar reffing PTB conditions. But the majority are not. I'm scratching my head as to why our refs are allowing so much messing about, in so many games.

Perhaps refs have been told to be less strict on the PTB in order to even up the contest? It might not have been put exactly like that but that may be the intended result.

I agree that if we applied the NRL PTB interpretation over here in every game it'd be better but I'm not sure all our players are fit enough to cope so we could see more blowouts on the scoreboard.

It must be something like that. I've been saying for weeks that there seemed to have been a sudden directive to avoid giving penalties wherever possible. It can't be an accident that all of a sudden all the refs usually play the first half hour with no penalties except the blindingly obvious ones, but it seemed to go overnight from penaltythons to that.

Ref's are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Another week it is a barrage of criticism for ref's penalising every offence & not letting the game flow. If you let the game flow you have to accept borderline decsions are going to be ignored. I agree that they need to decide which it is going to be, make an announcement to all teams & the media, stick by it for half a season then review it.