If you had a tap penalty or wiping of the count for both holding down and offside, anytime anyone made a break you would simply hold them down until the ref wiped the count, then the team mate next to you can tackle the player from an offside position (because they can just hang around the ruck) wipe the count again, lay on, wipe the count. Meanwhile the defensive line organises itself and any advantage has been lost yeah you can give a penalty in that situation but we give a penalty for just one of those offences now. The point the wiping of the count rather than tap penalty would be to speed up the game and allow refs to be more consistent on judging those offences. We would lose that by allowing offside players to be punished with a wiping of the count.

It does allow for a bigger angle, but not really in a significant way. And the angle itself isnt significant anyway. If a player kicks the ball from the behind the 20 and it goes out beyond the oppositions 20 its a 40/20 anyway.

Because you are reducing the penalty , the problem isn't with the rules , they are fine , it's the application of them that the Aussies have a problem with , they dont like to be penalised for cheating , they moan about refferee's applying the laws of the game to their superstar athlete's

Don't agree. I think this is an area that needs to be looked at. If we weren't prepared to change things up a bit to see what does / doesn't work we'd still be playing union.

1. Power play? Silly gimmick. The game doesn't need it.

2. The idea of wiping down the tackle count for holding down does have an appeal. It would also mean the ball was in play for a higher percentage of the game and it might help discourage wrestling in the tackle. If your team's tackling style involves a lot of holding down, that might mean your team is defending a lot more than they would under the old rules

3. For all the extra time the ball would be in play for rule 2, that time could very likely be lost for this one. If I want to see the ball hoofed down field from behind the 20 yard line, I'll go watch RU thanks

There is already a puishment for ileagal holding down , it's called a penalty

I am amazed that some on here are somehow looking at infringements that already exist as something new , and therefore needing a new puishment

You're all Nuts

I like that.

They are different issues though. Holding down on the break is a professional foul IIRC (like last man in football) that gets you sin binned. You're also talking persistent offences, which again would result in being sin binned.


The second part is fair point, but it's basically the fact that I don't believe it's a very good skill to reward being able to kick the ball 40m and bounce into touch. I think being able to kick the ball 40m and bounce into touch in a specific target area is the closest I'd go for.
Each to their own though. There's no right or wrong on this one. I think we all agree that the first one is a terrible gimmick though that goes against the principles of the game!

6 again rule seemed to work pretty well. Made for a very quick game. Interesting to hear the commentators suggesting more interchanges may be needed to accommodate this (7 man benches & unlimited changes in this game).

Both sides scored tries against the powerplay & nobody attempted a 20-50, no real future for these.

Watched the match this morning and thought the whole powerplay thing was stupid and a waste of time. It's something I would not want to see in our game. Whats wrong with keeping it 13 against 13?? It may be meant to create more try's, but whats the point if those try's are coming of the back of a weakened defence rather than good attacking play? Silly idea which is something youd expect to see in american football, not in rugby league.

the wiping of the tackle count for ruck offences kept the game going and was good in that aspect... but as a viewer I found it impossible to know what infringement had been made, and I bet the players didn't know themselves half the time. It will all be down to interpretation by the refs which imo is what could ruin it. today i felt the indigenous team got penalised in this way constantly yet the nrl team seemed to get away with similar things but got away with it. I'm insure If I'd want to see it become a permanent thing. especially the way the refs interpret things in super league I just don't think it would work.

the 20/40 thing is fine by me really, pretty impartial to that rule change.

Haven't seen the game, but don't need to to argue about the powerplay gimmick. It's just not rugby league.

Wouldn't mind seeing the wiping of the tackle count in action to make a judgement on it because I think it may have some potential, and by the sound of it it has sped the game up. You bring up a good point though in people not knowing that an offence has occurred or what offence has occurred. Perhaps they'd need a certain signal or something to highlight during gameplay.

another concern is that usually, after maybe a few similar offences a referee would bring the captain in and give a warning to try and cut it out. but in this sort of situation, the team wont get that warning and won't particularly know what it is they need to cut out.

Like you say, a certain hand signal by the ref might help highlight what is going on. It also sounded like they had the refs mic connected up to the stadium speakers so people in the stadium could hear what was being said, although it was difficult to hear on tv.

From what I saw this morning, it worked out ok simply because they have one referee concentrating on the ruck so everything gets seen, in superleague with only one referee a lot of things go unnoticed which is why I think we could struggle to implement it over here.

If there are persistent offences, then the ref can give a full penalty and stop the game to talk to players.

Not sure about the ref being microphoned up! MOOOOOOOVE!!!!!

I think Rule 2 has a lot of potential, and could possibly speed the game up, making it a bit better.

If the offence happens on 0 or 1 tackle then you dont really get any benefit. I understand its purpose and it sounds good, but when you think about it there are too many flawes. The other 2 are just stupid.

The wiping of the tackle count needs a bit of tweaking, in order to allow a team to quickly choose if they want to take the full penalty instead. I couldn't see if the ref(s) were signalling the penalties on TV, if they weren't they need to.

Other than that it does speed up the game and punishes wrestling techniques.