Everyone who has played the game knew that they risked injury from a broken leg etc. from which they could recover 99.9% of the time. What not everyone was aware of was the long term impact of repetitive head injuries from which they can't recover. Now the effects are known the sport has a duty of care to past and current players. In future maybe an insurance waiver could be introduced but then it would end up being "Why should the tax payer pay for their treatment; they knew the risks.", a view already taken by some sections of society about smokers and the obese.

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?