I think it is becoming a little bit soft. There's still some great hits and some very tough lads playing. However there's too much diving, too much feigning injury, too many players seeing their s when a big hit comes in (some don't like being tackled hard. What's that about?!?)

I miss the shoulder charge. There was nothing wrong with the way it was. An illegal tackle was a shoulder charge to the head or a late shoulder charge - that was bang on! A fair shoulder charge was great to watch.

The thing that gets me about it is that when a player runs in with the ball he shoulder charges the defenders...so what's the difference?

Purposely going out to spear tackle someone or high tackle someone in someway, or targeting joints to inflict injury, is not the same as an unfortunate incident where someone has accidentally got injured or worse has had some serious damage or died.

This is a collision sport. That's a reason for why we all love it. Like boxing or MMA. You cannot make these types of sports softer because you take away a huge reason for why fans love the sport and why the sport is so good.

For me, unfortunate things happen in collision sports and you have to live with that and just hope they don't happen, not try and stop them happening because when you try to do that you remove too much from the sport. You cannot expect serious injuries and worse not to happen in collision sports.

Of course, the bad tackles or techniques should always be punished.

Of course you have to do more than hope - and yes, you do have to try to stop injuries from happening, despite the baying bloodlust of the 'bring back the biff' mob.

The game is a tough, collision sport - not a violent free-for-all - and I'm quite comfortable with the rules being adapted and rigorously enforced to keep players as safe as reasonably practicable.

Agreed with this.

I remember getting into RL because I liked the art of passing, runarounds, elusive speed, and side-steps. The exhilaration of a passing move, finding a gap, drawing in your man, etc...

Seems to me lately we have a few sadists who would rather see "shoulder charges", big hits, and what not.

At the end of the day, all tackles are to prevent a team from scoring. They're not worth losing your life or damaging your spinal chord over.

I'm not an advocate of tick and pass. And I regret how the game has developed to where every player is a 17st weight lifting behemoth, but it is what it is, and we should enact changes to safeguard players at every opportunity.

And £75

Agree entirely with Bren2k and RL13.

I'm all for big hits, I enjoy the odd scrap and I can absolutely love a tough, intense, brutal defensive game.

But we HAVE to safeguard our players for 2 reasons. 1 is a selfish reason. I want to see our best players playing, not injured or retired. The 2nd is a moral reason. I believe it's wrong to expect players to play a game where we aren't doing everything possible to reduce the risk of both minor and serious injury to them.

Playing RL takes a huge physical toll on a persons body even without serious injuries. There are going to be lots of ex-players struggling to walk in 20/30 years time, again, even without sustaining serious injury.

Many RL fans I speak to massively underestimate the strength and power of the players these days and massively underestimate the power and force going into "regular" tackles let alone big hits. Unfortunately many just think it's a slightly bigger, slightly faster version of the game they played at amateur level. When it's a world away from that.

I've mentioned it before on here but I think it's worthy of mention again; In a game v Warrington a year or so ago, Jamie Peacock sustained over 20 impacts each equivalent to being in a 60mph car crash.

So imagine being in a 60mph car crash, 20 times in an hour and a half. Then do it again next week.

That's partly why head injuries are taken much more seriously now and why I think high tackles should be taken more seriously. Because a high tackle in 2015 is a completely different thing to a high tackle 20 or 30 or even 10 years ago.

And that's without the twisting, cannonballs etc that we're now seeing cause lots of injuries. The majority are unintended injuries from players trying to turn the ball carrier and slow the play the ball. Some are designed to cause pain to the ball carrier. The former should lead to the rules tweaked to avoid as many injuries as possible. The latter should be massively harshly punished and clubs and coaches punished if necessary until those sh|thouse tactics are hounded out of the game.

But both need addressing. As I don't want to see players hurt and their welfare threatened unnecessarily and I don't want to see RL's best players sat on the sidelines or retiring early.

Having been in a60mph car crash I find this very hard to believe.

From a Daily Telegraph piece, featuring an interview with Mark BitconRugby league players run up to 9km during an 80-minute game, experience fewer energy-restoring stops for set pieces than their colleagues in rugby union, and endure repeated collisions with opponents at an impact of up to 10G - which is similar to that of a car crash.'"

30mph is the figure I seem to remember hearing. It's still frightening, especially when you consider it happening around 20 times a game.

But in a car you are in a seat with a seat belt and an airbag plus the crumple zones of the car.

The only thing that crumples in an RL tackle is the 2 people involved.


The Jamie Peacock 60mph figure comes from Jason Davidson and Ben Jones at Leeds.

Agree with this, more and more techniques have come into play to slow pob, some reasonable (putting more men into the tackle, reasonable in that it has the negative of making the defensive line harder to set up with a man missing) some not so (attacker holding onto collars to cannonball challenges)

Instead of banning each new technique post game would it not be easier to install a 2nd ref? It would mean a quicker game which is better for the speccies, would mean the only way to slow pob would be to win the initial collision rather than roughhousing, again better for speccies and it would mean players, forwards especially, would have to be fitter so lighter and so it might reduce the overall collision injuries?

This would keep the game the rough contact sport which requires courage and toughness yet reduce the injuries and the naff tactics that have crept in.

Yep agree with that. A 2nd ref is a must in my view. It doesn't have to be like in the NRL where there are 2 full refs on the pitch and they swap over. We can have 1 ref but have a "roving touch judge" that can be behind the ruck and relay instructions to the players and give an often invisible viewpoint to the ref.

Aren't they called fans?

I think some of the analogies about the power of impacts in sports are a bit OTT. The amount of energy might be similar but not the effect. I remember reading an article before Frank Bruno fought Mike Tyson saying that Tyson's punch was the equivalent of being hit with a sledgehammer. I don't think many boxer's hands would last too long if they spent their time knocking down walls with their hands, even wearing gloves.