But if they all did it, every time, it would be dealt with in two weeks; coaches are involved in a race to the bottom, whereby they coach their players to circumvent and stretch the rules in every conceivable way - if they knew that messing around at the ruck was going be penalised *every* time, they'd coach their players not to do it and find a new way to cheat.

The reluctance of the officials to penalise on the field is, at present, being ruthlessly exploited.

And you need look no further than Premier League football to see what happens when the referees are reluctant to penalise. Do you think league refs would let football players talk to them like that? If the PL refs for a couple of Saturdays started handing out yellows and reds for dissent, then players might think again before they started mouthing off again...

Lomax obviously played at the ball, he put himself in a position to involve himself in the play, no different from a charge down, every day of every week that should be a drop out.

I don’t think there is a parallel to be drawn with the knock on, which was simply a knock on in the rules, and in the spirit of them.

I would agree with that, the ruck is, and has been for a few years, a complete lottery. Not only between games with some games having lots of players pinged for infringements, and games like Friday when anything and everything was let go, but between tackles as well. You could pick 50 tackles with 10 penalties in there, show any RL fan, player or referee those 50 tackles and ask them to pick the 10 where penalties were given and I doubt anyone would get close.

The ruck and PTB needs to be tidied up and speeded up and to be massively more consistent.

The tackled player (tries to) stands up but the defenders at the PTB are still holding him even when he is fully standing - rarely see a penalty even though the PTB is delayed but not obvious interference with hand to ball contact.

Couple of matches recently where the last action of the defender at the PTB is give the player with the ball a push causing poor balance - again causing at least a delay in playing the ball - occasional penalties only result.

Maybe another official should be on the field to help at PTBs - perhaps this person could be an official in training or perhaps a senior touchjudge? - or is there a shortage of officials in the game

An earlier comment suggested that the ref is often unsighted with PTB issues because they are checking offsides. With one ref on the pitch I believe that he should concentrate on the PTB whilst the touchjudges are responsible for offsides. I get the impression that both try to do the same thing - Let the ref concentrate on PTB issues, he is usually closer.