As far as I can see SL won’t be affected, apart from the fact we will have independent concussion observers at every match.

It is the community game, reserves and academy that this applies to.

Initially there will undoubtedly be more penalties, however just like in Union once the players and refs get used to the new rules these penalties will reduce significantly.

If you look back on games from the 50’s to the 1980’s the game looks very different.

It was barbaric at times with what went on, on the pitch where a game of rugby rarely broke out between the thuggery. This was accepted as part of the game. These days some of the acts that went on would land you in jail.

I’m not pro the changes, but I understand why they are being put in place and I believe that is to future proof the sport from a constantly changing society in which we now live.

Playing these rules will make it more dangerous. If you go high with a shoulder to shoulder tackle what you do is slow down the attacker for your other team mates to go low which is safer than going low.

If you low you risk an elbow or a knee, or another players head who is going low at the same time.

In this day and age where there is a rise of mma, bare knuckle boxing and slap fighting the RFL need to get a grip and tell the do gooders to shove it otherwise we won’t have a sport.

Kids Muay Thai you only punch to the head after age 14. Kids are too light to be causing much damage to their brains in contact, that happens when you have 2 x 16kg blokes smashing into each other.

If anything I think they should reduce how many metres defensive lines go back from 10m to 8m and introduce a maximum weight a player can be to 110kg and slowly reduce over time.

I believe saints have been trialling this rule change for a couple of years now

Does anyone know if these new rules will also apply in the NRL and the international game?

The problem the NRL and the sport will have now is, once a medical study has been done and some reccomendations have been made to reduce concussions, if the sport do not take any form of action they will leave themselves wide open for any furute claims from players, they will argue that medical evidence was there to reduce the possibility of long term affects yet the RFL/NRL/Sport did nothing about it.
I can only see the NRL at some point will change some rules based on any available studies, unless of course there is counter evidenve that says otherwise

can anyone explain to me how sports like boxing and MMA are able to operate?
Their objective is to actively attack the head (and other parts of the body) and cause an opponent injury.

Do the participants have to sign some kind of waiver?