The ball is actually in ‘play’ much less that it could be, a lot of it is just rubbish, feigning injury and a captain walking half way across a pitch to debate a blatant penalty to gain time. I’m in favour of stopping any chat to the ref until the ball is out of play, binning offenders. However the scrutiny on refs would get out of control for that.

The bits that get me though are the tap restarts and drop outs. There was a time when Leeds played Calderwood purely for quick taps. He wasn’t great, but he turned defence into attack and it was quite entertaining. Now a 20 meter restart is pedestrian and is almost a re-rack of a snooker table, with no penalty on poor skill.

The game needs some energy, some attacking flair and skill. People don’t want to watch (in my opinion) big robots run at other big robots and boot the ball in the air.

For your last paragraph, sir, you have won the internet.
Absolutely spot on

I think players are reluctant to take a quick tap these days,half expecting the ref to order a retake. It seems the surprise element of the quick restart has largely been removed from the game.

I have become more and more disillusioned with our game for sometime now, with regards the feigning injury Catalans do it blatantly. When we played them at home a remember the ref gesturing to a catalans player to get to his feet. A player went down in there semi against saints, the ref told him that if its not a head injury they must play the ball, he got up himself then. Against us again in the final trying to stop the game with cramp.
We took a couple of friends with us to a wire game this year one of our friends said at one point whats all those people on the pitch for, it was the water carriers that go on at every break in play, i just cannot believe a professional Rugby League player cannot go 10 mins without a drink of water. Then there are the coaches that stand just behind play giving instruction whilst the game is being played. Totally agree with regards the lack of flair.

7.45 kickoffs when the game is on SKY is a direct result of video ref referrals.