I wonder if this shoulder charge ban has come from insurance companies involved in the game?

I don't know but maybe they have reviewed the policy and have stated that certain areas need tidying??

I'm guessing it won't be brought back into the game though which I think is criminal.
I don't think I recall any serious enjoy from a shoulder charge. Certainly not one that doesn't involve the head

I was thinking the same thing at worse concusion which could happen with a swinging arm. Unlike the tip tackle which could potentially cause serious injury, a shoulder charge?

Love the shoulder charge but think in part us fans of the shoulder charge only have ourselves to blame for its demise. If over the last 5-10 years we took seriously the "accidental" and "marginal" high shots that were a frequent occurrence with the shoulder charge, rather than making excuses for it and saying it's part of the game, part of the shoulder charge, it happens, we might have been able to save the shoulder charge itself.

I know that's not true for everyone but I think too many of us fought the wrong battle and made the situation worse by justifying shoulders that slipped up into another players face. If we took a hardline approach with these high shoulder charges from the beginning we could have avoided the "injury crisis" and moral outrage from the journos.

The name and image of the shoulder charge was dirtied in large part because rugby league fans championed high shots as a good shoulder charge.

Still, I think the people in charge of the game should have shown a bit more in the way of smarts and maturity and at least tried to clamp down on the high shots properly before going after the shoulder charge in its entirety. It's a shame that the administrators didn't bother to try properly enforcing the rules that already existed, before going on to create new rules.

It feels to me that we're frequently creating new rules to cover for inept referees. Whether it's players shoulder charging each other in the head or punching each other in the face. If the referees reffed the game in the first place to the already existing rules there would have been no need to ban the shoulder charge, imo.

That's the most rounded and least bias opinion I can offer. Bring back the biff (and the shoulder charge!)

Commentators here are still banging on about 'great shots', and last year were saying shoulders that clearly ended up impacted the head were great as well. As you say, I think that's part of the problem - the hysteria over these so-called great hits which in fact were poor technique, with little or no control over the eventual point(s) of impact.

Had RL clamped down on the shoulder-charges that ended up hitting the head, there would have been no reason to ban them. I'd suggest they would have disappeared anyway because the chances of such a contact are very high with such an uncontrolled technique - coaches would instruct players not to do it.

As it was, the ban was all down to the risks of head injuries arising from such tackles, and the threat of future litigation. I've said before, the only evidence an ex-player would need to show that RL failed to meet its duty of care with respect to player welfare and head injuries would be to play highlights of 'classic' shoulder charges, complete with clear impacts to the head, and commentators wetting themselves about what great tackles they are, whilst the hit player reels around or fails to get up.