At least he his now bereaving on his own & out of the induced coma what is a positive thing...... lets hope he makes a good recovery, & i feel for the fella & his family & team mates.

Quote bewareshadows="bewareshadows"I would hope this is jumping the gun as medical records are private. It's something that I've never known for many years. I seem to recall maybe 10 - 15 years ago a player in the UK having a horrendous injury. I'm sure we all hope he can walk again.'" Might be John Power your thinking of? There was an article written on him a couple of years ago. www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... ghter.html

Quote bewareshadows="bewareshadows"I would hope this is jumping the gun as medical records are private. It's something that I've never known for many years. I seem to recall maybe 10 - 15 years ago a player in the UK having a horrendous injury. I'm sure we all hope he can walk again.'" Might be John Power your thinking of? There was an article written on him a couple of years ago. www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... ghter.html

Quote Errlee Berd="Errlee Berd"Might be John Power your thinking of? There was an article written on him a couple of years ago. www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... ghter.html'" There was also Pete Stephenson who broke his neck playing for East Hull about 10 years ago. He was told that he would never walk again but has made great progress over the years. Does a lot of good work for the RL benevolent fund too.

Quote Errlee Berd="Errlee Berd"Might be John Power your thinking of? There was an article written on him a couple of years ago. www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... ghter.html'" There was also Pete Stephenson who broke his neck playing for East Hull about 10 years ago. He was told that he would never walk again but has made great progress over the years. Does a lot of good work for the RL benevolent fund too.

I agree that we don't punish tackles that put players at risk like this enough. However this is one of those instances where no foul was committed, it was a freak accident that just shows what a dangerous game this is and anyone who puts their body on the line has my respect. In this instance, whilst McKinnon is the real victim, I can really sympathise with the guys who made the tackle. It must be awful having to carry something like this on your shoulders.

Have to disagree but this is not the time for it. The tackling players lifted his hips higher than his shoulders that is a foul and although we see it many times per game and have almost become used to it. it is dangerous and should be heavily penalised.

It's just awful news - literally sends a chill over me whenever I think of it - the panic on his face will stay with me a long time.

As for the tackle, although I believe there was no intent at all to injure, or commit foul play, once you lift the legs (he gripped inside his leg - which is illegal anyway) you have a responsibility to ensure the player doesn't go above horizontal and lands safely. In this case, McLean couldn't control it due to the weight of the other players, and McKinnon's momentum and technique - but ultimately, he shouldn't lift the legs in that case if he can't control it.

I don't blame McLean, it's the tactics used across all of RL now, but this one has gone badly wrong.

It's heart breaking to feel that someone playing sport can almost meet their end in this way.

Not sure what could be done about it to minimize the danger. There are malicious and dangerous tackles but in the end freak tackles also happen.

In the Leeds Saints game on Friday. Roby got right under a player in the tackle. No reaching between the legs, just a strong drive, that player could have tipped over, if it was not for Walker latching onto the top of the tackle. In the end it was controlled well, but these things can go easily wrong with tacklers pulling in all directions and attackers wriggling to get their arms free and release the ball for 2nd phase.

In American football they are all padded up with neck pads too, but I'm not sure it reduces the danger.

Yeah agree with this, that must be one of the most terrifying things to happen to anybody, let alone a pro athlete.

As others have said, we all know what can happen when things go wrong - terrible to see it though.

I hope they take similar action they took with the heart monitors and get this sorted out, feel terrible for the lad and would hate to see it happen top anyone else.

Looking at some of the posts on this site I doubt whether many people know much about RL in general let alone what happens in the NRL but there is a bit of 'history' between these 2 as McKinnon knocked McLean out after a head clash (and appeared to be quite pleased he had done so) in a finals match between The Storm and Newy last year

The video containing the incident can be found on that well known video sharing website we are not allowed to mention that rhymes with 'Blue Cube' when you type in "NRL 2013 Finals Week 2 Highlights: Knights V Storm"

It's a terrible injury to happen to anyone and I can only hope it wasn't in anyway malicious behaviour on behalf of McLean as I've heard one or 2 people mention.

7 matches.

Sounds big but in reality the outcome was always going to have a bearing on the penalty given.

How many did Long get for betting on a sure thing??? With no life in danger. So whilst it may seem a big penalty, I think there has been some understanding shown as he could have got 11.

7 matches seems appropriate to me. It's large enough to set an example, but any bigger and it would probably have been a tad tough on Mclean bearing in mind that this sort of tackle techinque happens dozens of time in a game without even a penalty (as it's rare it ends with the player landing on their head).

What I think needs to happen now is that similar length bans are handed out to anyone lifting the legs above horizontal, regardless of how the tackle ends. It's this technique that needs to be eradicated, as we've seen, it only takes 1 to go slightly wrong and it's catastrophic.

For me, this whole culture of trying to slow down the ruck and wrestle techinques (this includes cannon balls, chicken wings, crushers, lifting the legs in gang tackles etc) is the real blight on our game, and are the ones that cause serious injury, yet we've banned the legitamate shoulder charge due to the potential risk. I can't remember anyone getting a life threatening injury from a legitate tough shoulder charge tackle.