Quote: Him " think high tackles should be taken more seriously. Because a high tackle in 2015 is a completely different thing to a high tackle 20 or 30 or even 10 years ago.
And that's without the twisting, cannonballs etc that we're now seeing cause lots of injuries. The majority are unintended injuries from players trying to turn the ball carrier and slow the play the ball. Some are designed to cause pain to the ball carrier. The former should lead to the rules tweaked to avoid as many injuries as possible. The latter should be massively harshly punished and clubs and coaches punished if necessary until those sh|thouse tactics are hounded out of the game.
But both need addressing. As I don't want to see players hurt and their welfare threatened unnecessarily and I don't want to see RL's best players sat on the sidelines or retiring early.'"
Agree with this, more and more techniques have come into play to slow pob, some reasonable (putting more men into the tackle, reasonable in that it has the negative of making the defensive line harder to set up with a man missing) some not so (attacker holding onto collars to cannonball challenges)
Instead of banning each new technique post game would it not be easier to install a 2nd ref? It would mean a quicker game which is better for the speccies, would mean the only way to slow pob would be to win the initial collision rather than roughhousing, again better for speccies and it would mean players, forwards especially, would have to be fitter so lighter and so it might reduce the overall collision injuries?
This would keep the game the rough contact sport which requires courage and toughness yet reduce the injuries and the naff tactics that have crept in.
