You lot talk about the speed of the game like fixing it (Not that it is broken) would matter.



Look, the speed of the play the ball is dictated by the tactics in use by clubs. In Australia our play the ball has been organic, its has sped up and slowed down over time depending on what teams were doing to make it speed up and slow down.

This year we added a second ref, because the game had become so fast, a single ref was no longer able to do the job of policing the ruck along with all his other duties.

Players now get penalized for what players have been penalized for doing since Moses picked up a footy, slowing down the play the ball illegally.



Now England got crushed at the WC and you looked at other teams and you decided that it was because we had slow play the balls that we were good. What it actually was was a better tackling technique, but anyway, its not the first time you lot have been wrong.

So you went back home and artificially slowed down the play the ball thinking that would fix everything.



Speed it up, slow it down, it doesn't matter.

You have no ability to read and attack and know where to be in defense. Your clubs are JUST starting to realize that bringing in "Wrestling coaches" might be a good idea, its been happening in Australia for nearly 20 years.

In attack your game is based all around taking on a collapsing, panicked defense, something that takes no skill, very little reading of a defense, no number counting, any monkey could do it.


Basically, you built your entire premise for playing the game around capitalizing on how bad you are at playing the game!



No rule changes of any kind will ever change what is wrong with the British game. If you were flooded with the worlds best coaches today to fix all the problems at EVERY level, it would take 15-20 to turn these problems around.

Oh do come on! All teams want a quick PTB when THEY are in possession, an aspiration which seems to lose urgency when their opponents have the ball. I can`t be the only one to notice, surely??

Nothing like a true fan.



That job was well and truly done in the World Cup.

are you saying the game isnt slowing down? that it is but it makes no difference to anything?

or that the game is only slowing down for saints with every other team in the league immune from this phenomenon?

The game needed to slow down in this country. Its still too fast and error ridden for my liking.

Slow it down by a factor of ten.......its not the speed of the play the ball that's the problem. Its the fact that the players are sh*t.

To be fair they've tried to fix the simplest thing wrong with SL - the over-reliance on quick PTB to ensure huge yardage from dummy half (and to have a cat in hell's chance of creating a try without a kick or simple missed tackle). Over time getting rid of this as the major means of attack will lead to improvements in attacking play, but it will take time and the balance cannot be skewed too far in favour of the defence. From what I've seen the game looks marginally slower, but you can still get quick PTB, so I'm not entirely sure this is as big a change as some make out.

The other big issue identified last year (again excluding the quality of players) is the inability to read - at all - second man plays and anything involving dummy runners. Watch the embarrassment that was England vs PNG for everything you need to know about why England's defence was torn to pieces by both Aus and NZ. England couldn't even read an attack led by an out of position Stanley Gene. I'm not sure if a huge amount has been done in this area - if not expect to see England players again looking for penalties (which would have been given in SL) whilst the opposition scores.

You are correct that rule changes will not make players instantly better - it won't. That is a heap bigger problem.

Anything that takes time to create results will never work in rugby league in this country.

If it doesn't provide a quick fix, it'll be binned next year in favour of something else that is supposed to.

Correct. Sometimes rugby league is too innovative and fast moving for it's own good.

The RFL can do absolutely anything with the game and how it's played, there'll always be fat ba***rds on the terraces who know a damn site more about how it should be done.

will it?

will it not lead to more 5 drives and a kick as more set defences with more time to take a breather and mess about at the PTB will lead to fewer breaks and fewer risks taken as fewer of them will result in tries, so we swap great attacking risky plays, for 5 drives and a kick hoping for a mistake or a chance to put on a kick play,

wouldnt we have been better to let the game naturally find an answer to the quick ptb? whereby a defensive side would innovate and find themselves rewarded by this, with the other sides then needing to find a way to innovate attacking wise against this

that seems a much better way than simply pretending the quick ptb doesnt exist,

the PTB last night was turgidly slow with flops and laying on from both sides,

Totally agree

KR's was, Leeds' PTB was very quick.

Leeds just tackled more dominantly and found their feet quicker. It's up to other teams to match them.