To be fair to the RFL it sounds like they tried to keep it in. Looks like it's gone down well with the players. Only way they could have created more of an outrage is by not paying them anymore.

Even with the players being bigger, running faster and harder, even playing on plastic pitches

As Nobby says bend you back and get your timing right and you can smash someone just make sure you get your arms round them instead of tackling with you back half turned like a house.

Poor decision, gimme a refund on my tickets if you are going to change the rules of the game after I buy them

There's rarely a kick-off or a goal-line drop-out in an average game. Shall we get rid of them because they rarely happen? What a stupid thing to say.

The problem with that of course is that the figures are blatantly untrue.

To accept this disney land claim of 0.3 shoulder charges a game is to let-on that you've never seen a game of league before, or don't understand what a shoulder charge is. It's profoundly untrue. Watch a Roosters game, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves makes a couple of shoulder cahrges a game. Watch a Warriors game, Ben Matulino would make a few a game.

I don't think I've ever in my life seen a full game of rugby league that was void of a shoulder charge. And yet, going off the figures the NRL wheeled out, the majority of rugby league games do not include a single shoulder charge. And this is why I claim the figures were sexed up, that whoever was responsible for the study has blundered intentionally or out of serious stupidity.

0.3 shoulder charges a game. I ask you all to think on that figure for a moment. That means that 63% + of rugby league games have not one single shoulder charge. NOT ONE , but I still don't get the ban in a general sense. I can't see it reducing high shot or brain trauma and therefore I don't see how it protects any body from litigation.

The RFL seem incapable of making decisions and offer no leadership. Going back on a ruling they made two months ago is clear and sad evidence of this. Why not just let the ARL make our laws and cut out the middle men. The ruling itself is a bad one, most of the dangerous tackles that happen are illegal anyway. If a player makes a challenge with a shoulder or head and it makes contact with the opponents head it is a high tackle. Having a clamp down on this would have been much better. “A player that goes recklessly into a tackle and makes contact with the opponents head with any part of his body will be sent off” would have been a much clearer line to draw. Now fans, players and especially commentators will be confused to what is deemed a shoulder charge for the rest of the season.

It's hardly difficult to determine what is a shoulder charge and what isn't.

If you make no attempt to use your arms in the tackle, it's a shoulder charge. If you at least make the effort with your arms to try and wrap up the ball carrier, it's a legitimate tackle.

If this teaches players that they can't just recklessly fly in with the shoulder in an attempt to clean out the ball carrier, not caring where they make contact, then all well and good.

What do you call making an effort with your arms? If a player hits someone with their shoulder and their arms come up, but make no contact with the player, is that a shoulder charge or a good tackle?

There's the crux though, a player can say he went in to make an attempt to use his arms into the tackle (why does it have to be "around"???) but it can easily be seen by a ref that he didn't, angle of bodies, speed of play, ref unsighted, physical position of players (attacker side steps into another player whose shoulder makes contact first effecting the tackle meaning the arms don't look like being used or didn't make contact...or did they? Video ref at every other tackle now, that might be the case no?

An example; An attacker is still making forward progress with one or two defenders hanging on, I lower my shoulder to make an orthodox tackle attempting from my point of view to use my arms but he ducks/falls at that split second and my shoulder contacts him first and my arms don't how is that going to be adjudged? I have still struck the player without use of my arms(or even an attempt) it would seem on the face of it to the ref in that split second, I could even have contacted the head yet I have made a legitimate and clearly not reckless challenge, under the new law I could possibly be sent off and banned even without striking the head.

I go into a tackle same as above, the attacking player turns and puts his shoulder right into my face (because my head is forward of my shoulder in an orthodox tackle) I get knocked out/neck injury, does the attacking player get sent off...no yet I would have as much if not more damage. I then make a claim against the RFL for not protecting me by telling the nasty attacker not to use his shoulder in the tackle. Just because the rule/RFL Law is no shoulder tackle from the defender doesn't make it right that the attacker should also be allowed to use the shoulder when in a case of law the point would be made that the shoulder charge rule was brought in to reduce injuries, so why didn't they ban all shoulder to shoulder contact from both attacker and defender?

Too much grey area and situations that will be fair tackles being pulled up and still not reducing the injuries to an extent that warrants the ban.

Er . . . who on earth claimed they are?

The governing bodies' issue here is that a shoulder charge creates the RISK of a shoulder-head contact, and thus injury.

I cant understand the RFL now saying we need to follow what the RLIF say when a few weeks ago they changed various rules, on little more than a whim, without the RLIF approving that. This has been the case every season with the RFL and NRL for as long as I can remember so its a bit rich to be hiding behind that now.

I agree that the RLIF should set the rules so that we have a standardised game the world over and all domestic leagues follow these rulings but that is a long way from what has happened here and what has happened in previous seasons.