That leads to interpretation, which in turn leads to inconsistancy. It needs to be black and white with minimal grey. Not just for this rule but for most of the rules.

Spot on.

If it truly were black and white, then we would have the situation I described in my original post, where the split-second between touching a grounded ball, and picking it up would be judged as grounding it.

The solution is for the rules to be the same as outside of the in-goal. So if you fall over and ground the ball in your own in goal but are not touched by the opposition, you should be able to get up and play on. If someone is touching you, it's grounded and a drop out.

There are tons of times where players athletically dive to recover a ball in the in goal, goalkeeper style, but are not judged to have grounded it, so why should slipping over count as grounding it?

I almost typed that this was only common sense. Then I wondered what would happen if a player slipped, grounded the ball, then lost posession allowing an attacker to touch down. The defender would claim he'd grounded the ball intentionally, the attacker that he hadn't. It would be left to the ref to make a decision that would leave 50% of the audience dissatisfied - which happens too often in the game already IMO.

At the point of the slip, it would be down to the referee to wave 'play on'.

Scrap the option for a team to ground the ball in their own in-goal area. Simple no?

Wouldn't matter as he'd not been tackled, much like if you fell over on your 10 yard line and lost the ball. The only way to ground the ball over your own line would be by being tackled.

What about a grubber to the in-goal. A defender successfully grounds the ball but due to his momentum going a different way for whatever reason he is unable keep hold of it/pick it up and the ball remains in goal for an attacker to "score". What would you do in this instance? Scrap the ball being forced by defenders altogether?

That's actually a sensible idea. Players could still be tackled in goal but rather than being able to place the ball down they'd have to grab hold of it or knock it out of play.
It removes the inconsistency or whether a player deliberately grounds it or not. As others have said, players will often put downward pressure on the ball simply to grab hold of it and pick it up so there's already inconsistency because that's never given as a drop out, while someone slipping in the in goal is.

But what happens when a defender deliberately grounds the ball in the in goal but isn't tackled?

I don't think it's that big of an issue, no different to slipping and your foot going out in touch.

The in goals rules need to be made consistent.
A high kick or bomb caught in goal is a 20 mtr re-start.
When the ball is grubber kicked and caught in goal that also should be a 20 mtr re-start, not as at present where the defender has to run the ball out of the in goal area.
The current rules are inconsistent.
So a player fielding a ball in goal should be able to make it dead either by catching it or grounding it.
Under the present rules repeat sets are too easy come by. If we changed then half backs would have to be far more creative and coaches would have to coach more creative play. At times all we get are five drives then an angled kick to trap the defender in goal for a repeat set. That's lazy and not creative at all. Sometimes teams have to defend repeated sets when the attacking side haven't a clue how to break them down. They are just trying to batter them into conceding a try.
Let's just make the rules consistent for the kicks in goal.

First things first, picking up the ball does not constitute grounding it[iPicking up in in-goal[/i 3. (a) [iPicking up the ball is not grounding it and a player may pick up the ball in his opponents’ in-goal in order to ground it in a more advantageous position.[/i

A sensible interpretation of this suggests that the same applies to players picking up the ball in their own in-goal area.



No, for the reason stated above.



No it's not.

I really like the rule; it's consistent. If an attacking player grounds the ball they immediately kill it, so why shouldn't it be the same with a defending player? It also ties in nicely with the 'simultaneous grounding' law which allows tries to be scored when both and attacking and a defending player ground the ball at the same time. I don't think scrapping the current in-goal laws would sit right with that.

OK, so some players slip/fall over and inadvertently ground the ball. Big deal, some players accidentally put a foot in touch, or on the dead-ball line. Get over it. In fact I've seen the odd player utilise this rule to kill the ball and save them running into a brick wall kick-chase.

Rugby League has laws, not rules.

Stupid comment. The laws of the game [iare[/i its rules. The fact that the front page refers to the laws of the game doesn't mean they're NOT rules. ffs.

Oh btw the "Laws" specifically refer to
"the 40/20rule"
"Downtown...This
rule delays the movement of the off side players downfield"
"Delay restart of play
(i) To deliberately delay the restart of play from the goal
line, 20 metre line or halfway line constitutes misconduct
for the purposes of this rule"

Is it your case that these references are meaningless and these rules therefore don't exist?