Ah, a true man of the seventies!

My pet peeve is the 'fumble' interpretation of a ball that is lost backwards but ruled as a knock forward. It absolutely p****s me off to see the game stopped and a scrum given because a player has knocked the ball backwards, yet it happens time and again. I know some people think treating it as a 'fumble' penalises poor handling but that's not what is supposed to happen. As long as it's gone backwards I'd rather let both sets of players scramble for the loose ball than have an a technically unecessary scrum, the side making the error is penalised because they have to work harder to recover and the opposition gets a chance to either win possession or at least put some additional pressure on. I was watching the Wales v Scotland RU game on Saturday and I saw a ball get dropped backwards by Wales and the referee (correctly) ruled play on and the Welsh players scrambled to recover, and I said to my Dad in a SL game that would almost certainly have been rulled as a knock on despite it clearly going backwards.

One noticeable difference from an Aussie ref yesterday was that he allowed play to carry on when an England player was down injured in backplay. While there is a fine line between putting a team at a disadvantage when a player is genuinely injured, we would see a reduction in play acting and fake injuries if this was done more often.

We do that anyway. The only time we don’t is when play has already stopped, the injured player is in the way of the play, or it’s a head injury.

I don’t think there’s an issue with faked injuries during play, it’s when play has stopped that we have a problem.
Unfortunately now I think that we have to go down the football route, if a player needs the trainer/physio etc and play to be delayed then they should go off the pitch and not come back on for the next set of 6.

I don’t want to go down that route and there will be some legitimate injuries caught up in that unfairly but I don’t know of another way to discourage the faking of injuries that we currently see.

I think most agree the game needs speeding up. Though I’m not necessarily in the camp of ‘let’s do what the Aussies do’ I think they’ve made a few good changes recently.

1: Standardise the rules of the game throughout NRL, SL and internationals. Any future tweaks are agreed and implemented across all levels.

2: 2 referees, if this means loosing the VR and putting him on the field, so be it. See point 1.

3: Actually implement the rules, not an interpretation of. Ie when the ref calls held the players get of, not wait for the ref to be held then put the player to the floor then get off. If not it’s a penalty. With regard to this the refs need to call held sooner, as soon as forward momentum/being pushed back is stopped this will probably reduce offload but speed the PTB up. Attached must play the ball with the foot.

4: Shot clock, great innovation imo, see point 1.

5: Increase substitutes to 6, 2 of which must be club trained and under 21 at the start of the season and club trained. At the same time decrease substitutions to 8 per game.

6: Milking, let’s face it, every team and virtually every player are guilty of it to some extent. There was a great example in the test match. I think it was Hill who obviously made sure that he moved and played the ball directly into a player lying on the floor, tried to milk the penalty, ref ignored it resulting in Hill disadvantaging his own team. If the refs don’t give a penalty if they believe milking is involved the players will stop doing it.

As far as the rules go that’s a good start imo

If you are not a player, ref or actively attempting surgery on a fallen player you must not be on the pitch. Water should be available on the touch line. Stop coaches standing on the field of play directing players, in fact award extra points if the attacking team can trample underfoot anyone in a fluorescent bib on the pitch.