Do you remember the old days, when a rugby league match used to kick off at 3pm on a Sunday and finish around 4.35pm? I wish it was still like that. The sport evolves, of course, and there’s still a lot to enjoy in modern RL, but one thing I can’t stand is the amount of stoppages we have now. Video technology is responsible for some of it, but it’s not just that. In past times, the game would only be stopped for an obviously serious injury. Now they stop it for anything, even cramp! If you’re not fit enough to get through a match without getting cramp, tough – why should the game be stopped because of it? Every single scrum and drop-out seems to be preceded by an endless wait while everyone stands around having a drink. Virtually every penalty is argued against, giving team-mates another chance to get their breath back. Matches routinely take two hours now, and it’s not good for teams whose momentum keeps getting interrupted, and for spectators who have to twiddle their thumbs while nothing is happening. It’s frustrating and it needs sorting out.

Quite agree, were heading towards American Football with a break after every effected tackle.

It’s pathetic all the faux-injury . This sport used to pride itself on being a tough game for tough men, now they dive and feign injury as much as Wendyballers.

These players need to book their ideas up

The Feigning injury thing is a tough one for me.... take Toby king at Wembley for example.
He kops a high Wide and Handsome Shot right on the bridge of the Nose and the ref waves play on.... back in the day if that happened yes you'd get frustrated but it set a marker for the game, you'd point at the bloke who did it and tell him he was going to get one back but he'd have to guess when it was coming....

You would bide your time and hit him with a beauty of your own...or if you couldn't get one in, you'd wait until it kicked off and make sure you were first in with a few windmills and evened up the score and then some....

That opportunity is taken away from a player now, as he'd get 3 or 4 games for illegal contact and more for repeated punching if it got to that...

So you have to do the next best thing and embarrass the Ref, Stay down let the whole world see he's missed the most obvious high tackle since Adrian Morley's and wait for him to be told in his earpiece he's a ref and to give a penalty...

bring back some biff and we get back to an hour and a half a few minutes of injury time....

Alas, the slightest sign of any "biff" will result in Eddie having palpitations on air, with Brian "housewife's choice" Carney fanning him down, with a copy of Open Rugby, and an immediate phone call from Eastern Australia, when a gruff Yarkshire voice will announce "THERE'S KIDS WATCHING. THEY DON'T WANT TO SEE THIS"

I think the time wasting before the defending team takes a drop out needs to be brought to a halt. Stopping the clock is not the answer, a penalty would be.

The time wasted between a ball being knocked dead, and the kick being taken, is ridiculous.
90% of the time, the ball is patted of the grass (rarely gets put in the crowd).
A ball boy then throws it near the posts, then the players have some passing practice, then the "eventual" kicker checks it's pressure, bounces it on the turf two or three times, sticks his hand up, and FINALLY kicks it..

Taking the slash

I took a stopwatch and recording 53 minutes and 35 seconds the 1st half lasted from the kick off to half time and 53 minutes and 11 seconds for the second half so the game actually lasted 104 minutes

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.