Quote: Superted "It is marginal, and you do see plenty of them, but it's still an illegal tackle - there has just been no consistency in dealing with these.
What the stand alone photo doesn't show you is that McLean comes in as a third man to a stationary tackle, where the 2 other defenders have stopped McKinnon moving, and wrapped up his upper body. He then grabs the inside of 1 leg and lifts his hips above his head - it is only marginal, a split second decision and I'm sure unintentional - he's just trying to effect the tackle and slow down a play the ball by putting McKinnon down - however, as soon as he makes the decision to 'lift', he automatically takes responsibility for ensuring a safe landing and stopping going over horizontal- this is something he could not guarantee or control in this instance. Instead of the lift, he could have used a technique to drag the player to the ground, but that takes longer and would likely have been penalised, hence the lift technique is coached as it's quicker, and has more impact.
Other than trying to slow down the ruck, there is no need for a 3rd man in a tackle to 'lift'. Usually the 2 man tackle is effective anyway, the third man is just trying to control the speed of the ruck - lifting is a dangerous way of doing this, as are cannon balls, 'stingers' into the ribs etc. They're grub tactics and as we've seen, once one team do it, it spreads like wild fire, as it's common across all of RL now - the authorities can easily clamp down on it by having stricter rules on exactly what a 3rd man in the tackle can/can't do, and hand out lengthy bans to those the break these rules, regardless of injury.'"
McClean is second into the tackle if not joint first(he makes initial contact at the same time as number 14 and well before number
.
There is no way on earth any serious person could say he was 3rd into the tackle. Nevermind 3rd man into a stationary tackle. Watch it again.
