Definitely too soft, Jim Mills and Bill Ashurst would get about 4 appearances a year with today's rules.

Its terrible that they care about player health & welfare isn't it !?!?

Absolutely!

When I dislocated my knee whilst playing rugby league as a kid, I was told to walk it off. These days it would be a medical emergency.

What !?

Not even a quick wipe first with the magic sponge ?

Wow, they played the game hard in your neck of the woods.

I agree with you regards the fights but the cheap shot Elbow smash from Dannatt on Hanley that broke his jaw in several places has no place in any era of the game for me.

I think he was kidding

If all players and clubs could sign some sort of disclaimer about damages and loss of earnings etc, we could go back to 70's style cheap shots and a proper bit of biff on the field of play but, these days, there is so much risk of someone suing someone else ore the organisation they are employed by, everything has to change.
A decent scrap would get the players going, lift the crowd and probably add to the spectacle of the game and yes, everything in life is becoming far too sanitised but, it will never go back to "the good old days".

The Sykes yellow was soft IMO. However i think it's a case of referees not handling situations correctly rather than the game going soft. We had a thread on here the other week about Greg Birds spear tackle that most thought should have been a red, and only got a yellow. We were talking about the Sykes incident on our board and thought the yellow was harsh, but said we're still owed plenty from the game at theirs earlier in the season. The referees allowed out and out thuggery in that game. Joe Keyes had a shoulder charge to the head that knocked him unconscious and was forced to miss the next week too due to the severity of it, yet the officials thought it was absolutely fine. Same game, our full back carried ball over dead ball line. He was then picked up and hurled into some metal barriers. A resulting fight ensued and referee decided sin-binning a man from either side was the correct call. As i said, i don't think it's a case of the game going soft, the referees seem to be struggling to get these decisions right.

As we have a shortage of referees, we're getting some who aren't ready and getting stuff wrong. , Spear tackles, canon ball tackles, shoulder charges to the head going unpunished yet they seem quite keen to sin-bin players when they hurt their neck, no matter what the actions of the tackler actually were (see Dean Hadley case) Not easy being a referee and they will get stuff wrong in a split decision (e.g. Liam Watts incident) but there's too many cards being shown to incidents that are nothing, and no action being taken against acts of thuggery,

One last point, next season i want a clamp-down (automatic sin-binning) for goading, rubbing peoples heads, screaming in their faces. Sick of it this season.

Agree 100% BullMania

You think players should sign away their own protection and risk injury and loss of earnings for your entertainment? And they call Wigan thugs...

Double wwhoosh it would seem.

No it's not going too soft, repeated concussion causes brain damage, nothing to do with been "hard". Everything possible needs to be done to prevent concussion and other injuries, nobody wants to see another Alex Mckinnon or death on the field.

If the likes of Marco Asenio start playing rugby then i'll start worrying.

I had to laugh when I read about that.