Quote: Barbed Wire "When a team has to have music played to the waiting stadium to plug the gaps while innocuous tackles get reviewed, it’s gone wrong somewhere. There are enough breaks in a game where retrospective action can be taken where an advantage has been allowed to play, should a card be required.'"
This. I saw BBC breakfast the other morning actually bigging up the new season by telling everyone what a great game RL is because it's so fast and has hardly any stoppages, it's end to end etc. Then in the very first round we had some very long stoppages in several games. It's ridiculous. Everything we used to laud the game for is being stripped away. No, I don't want a return to the olden days, it's great we're focusing more on player safety, but as others have said its coming at the cost of quality play. It's no longer about skill but who can con the ref more and who has less players on the pitch. So much tinkering with the rules year on year, and throughout round 1 we saw players milking the new system for all it's worth. All the while the sky snake oil salesmen tell viewers how good the game is getting when actually it's a terrible watch. Also, don't crow about your rule changes if you won't enforce them unilaterally and consistently.