after the much talked about Moa red card last weeked. do we think that players will be less likely to going with a leading shoulder? and will reffs react more harshly now that they've seemingly been given the green light. will fans be calling "off!, off!, off!" or even worse will players go down holding their head if they think they might get a man sent off? or is this just a one off n soon be forgotten about?

If it doesn't connect with the head, there isn't a problem.

Agreed - if it makes players more mindful of where the shoulder hits, that's probably a good thing.

It might improve player health to make the shoulder charge illegal.

There are a number of players in the game who's off-season involves a shoulder reconstruction due to them slamming it into players all season long.

About as much as they'll stop tackling now that Tommy Lee's picked up a ban.

im a hull fan that has no real issue with the red card or even the one match ban. due to the fact that contact was made to the head. having said that im now interested to see what happens next. if the ref call it right every time and only ever gives a pen/red card when contact is made with the head, then all is well. but ill be looking out for changes in attitude to the shoulder charge in general. what if we start to see an over reaction from opposing players, refs, fans, coaches, pundits to that kind of big hit, will shoulder changes become looked down on?

The only thing I could say about the Moa incident was the London players didn`t go flying in on him after the tackle.Not saying it was a legal tackle,but more of a mistimed one.Obviously just my opinion.

Most people seem to agree with you, but I think mistimed = careless, so his punishment was appropriate.

In all fairness, joint injuries are just an unfortunate inevitability of our game and can happen in the least likely scenario's. Joe Westerman dislocated his shoulder in teh act of scoring a try. Required surgery and will be out for 3 months. Just an unlucky accident.

This may have been raised elsewhere so apologies if I'm repeating someone else's point but:

The signal given by the referee when sending Moa off was a point to his shoulder then the signal of a shoulder charge, I didn't understand this there was no reference to a head high tackle. A shoulder charge as I thought was a legal challenge. Has there been an alteration of the rules or am I reading too much into the referees signal.

Personally, I'd like to see the shoulder charge banned from our game.It's a hard enough sport without increasing the risk of someone getting seriously injured.

Union players manage to get big hits without it, and I've always thought it was an easy option for a player who lacked the technique, or the bottle to put in a proper hard rugby tackle.

The last paragraph says it all - a shoulder charge is for those not prepared to use the correct tackling technique

Nothing wrong with a shoulder charge as long as its below the neck. Plus big shoulder charge hits are actually pretty rare.

The fact a defender is hitting with the shoulder rather than the arm doesn't preclude the need to take some degree of care over where they make contact.

If you hit an opponent to the head, it's a penalty. If you do it recklessly/deliberately it's potentially a red card or a subsequent suspension IMO.