You can bet though, it'll be let go all year, then steve ganson will suddenly decide to penalise someone for not touching the ball in the playoffs and it'll end their season.

It's typical.

Every time i see him casually roll the ball under his foot without making even a miniscule attempt to make some form of motion with his feet, I grimace slightly.

One of these days a ref is gonna pull him up out of nowhere.

There would be little problem? Seriously?
If tacklers rolled away immediately the attacker was tackled then all we'd get is constantly offside/not square markers plus 1 other and constant dummy-half scoots to take advantage of the huge gap behind the ruck.

With a 10m defensive line there has to be an element of a slower play the ball. Even in the NRL with 2 refs and a quick play the ball that rule isn't refereed to the letter of the law. The same as the play the ball.

Rugby League is a complicated sport with lots of rules and masses of constant decisions for a referee to make.
I don't think we can ever 100% define a rule for every single part of play.
As I said, most team sports have an element of interpretation in the rules, be it "not releasing a tackled player" in Union or fouls in football, the rules aren't complete, absolute definitions.

Agree entirely with that. Which is why I think we need regular reviews of every rule in the game and now that refs are full time and have been for some time it does annoy me that there is so much inconsistency.

I think both decisions were actually right. I think it was a knock on (but the try should've still been given because it shouldn't have been referred to the VR. Silverwood had already made his decision) and I think the lomax one was a drop out but not for the reason given. IIRC as it was kicked through a saints player dived across and touched the ball, it then bounced up and hit Hardaker and then hit Lomax and went dead.
I don't believe Lomax was playing at the ball but then I don't think Hardaker was either. I think the ball hit him rather than him playing at the ball.

How hard is it to roll away from the ruck when you've made a tackle?
How hard it it to play the ball without moving 5 yards off the mark?
How hard is it to put your foot on the ball when you're playing it?
I'm all for speeding up the PTB, but it can be done correctly - the Aussies seem to have cleared things up and their game is quicker than Super League now (which is what Wigan found out in the WCC). Refs need to sort it out...

How many referees would allow this bit of the rules, without bowing to the inevitable cries from the stand of "Knock on!"?

As for policing the ruck, it's about time we had unified global rules with regards to two referees on the pitch.

Sometimes easy, sometimes not. Depends on the type of tackle and how many tacklers involved. It also ignores the point about leaving those players instantly offside or not square. So leaving a massive area for the dummy half to scoot into. We can have that if we want, but I don't think tacklers should be punished (by being made offside and so out of play) simply for making a legal tackle. And I certainly don't want to see the game dominated by dummy half runs.

Again, sometimes easy sometimes hard. A tackled player uses a lot of energy to get up off the floor and play the ball quickly. This sometimes leads to players moving off the mark or appearing to dive forwards when in fact it's just the momentum from getting up quickly.
We can stop this if we want. But it would lead to significantly slower play the balls.
Also sometimes players are knocked into by retreating defenders/tacklers getting into position or there is a defender still on the floor where the play the ball would take place. Most of these actions by defenders are accidental and a result of the massively increased speed of the game these days.
Again we can stop this if we want, but it leads to a slower game.


Quite hard actually, especially for bigger players when tired or starting from an awkward position.
If it was easy why wouldn't everyone do it?
As with the others, we can "clamp down" on this if we want but I find it a largely irrelevant part of the play that strict penalising of it would only slow down the game.


Those things you mentioned rarely provide much of a benefit to either side and I think a strict reading of the rules would only damage the game and not improve it. There can never be a rule book that completely and absolutely lays down rules for every aspect of play.
For instance the holding down rule. How long is allowed before a penalty is given? The only way to prescribe that properly is to give a time period. But in some cases that would be too long, eg a 1 man tackle round the legs, and in others would be too short eg a 3/4 man tackle that leaves 1 defender underneath the attacker and the other 3 peeling off.
So we have to rely on a refs interpretation of that rule.
The ptb's in the NRL aren't perfect either. They're better and quicker because they have the 2nd ref telling both attacker and defenders what to do. But they still have plenty of play the balls off the mark and plenty of play the balls occurring without it being played by the foot.
The 2nd ref has helped a lot and is something I think we should have but they don't apply a strict rule book approach to the play the ball either.

The ruck is a total mess - I've been saying this for a few seasons now.

It doesn't need each tackle to be policed to a miniscule level of detail, but it does need to be cleaned up such that the tacklers sprawling all over the tackled player in a deliberate attempt to slow down the ptb is stopped; roll away or be penalised - and don't just throw your arms in the air whilst still impeding the ptb as if it absolves all your sins.

Secondly - play the ball from the spot you stood up at, instead of taking two steps forward and one to the side; it makes the markers not square and defenders appear off side.

Thirdly - clear the ruck means just that; get your hands off the tackled player and get your knees away from his hands/arms.

Finally - make a meaningful attempt to play the ball; rolling it between your legs is not a meaningful attempt.

It doesn't seem that complicated to me, but a total lack of consistency from the various officials means that coaches and players are taking massive liberties.

^ What he said. Refs give around 3/4 seconds for players to get off the man. If you're a player, you should be able to judge how long the ref's giving you to get up. As a fan, you can usually tell on TV when he's going to blow up.

And you shouldn't just be able to lie there looking at the referee while players try to play the ball around you and in some cases into you...

All the suggestions here would mean having 50 penalties per game and numerous sin bins, James Child anyone.
In 30 years of watching rugby league he is the only official that has put me off going to games.

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.