Parliament is chosen by the people every 5 years. If the people are not happy with the job that parliament is doing, the MP's can be removed and replaced. Parliament = People. How is it looking? Well it looks like many in parliament are trying to ignore the will of the people which will result in them losing their seats at the next election as it should be rather than a bunch of old men in Brussels who cannot be removed.

That is not what we are debating here though, the only reason i commented on it was because somebody else brought it up.

Back to Skerrett...

Sorry, had to reply to this....

Prosperity? You have no idea what you are talking about! The EU is a failing mess. Go to Greece and Italy and tell them how prosperous the EU is. Tell every business in the UK that has to abide by EU regulation no matter if they sell into the EU or not. Do you enjoy paying more for every day essentials such as food or clothing?

And Who are you to tell me What I'm thinking when you say "im not imagining it as you seem to think".
Who are you to question other posters who have a different "opinion" when comparing their memories of the past?

You mention crowds, let someone tell me what the Average crowds for rugby league were in say the top flight in the 70s/80s/90s compared to the 2000s and 2010s?
When we had rads/Farrell/Dallas/renouf/furner/lam etc we averaged about 10/11k
In the last 3 years although we had a drop last year we have still averaged between 12 and 13 1/2k , more than we had in the glory early years of SL and not too far off the attendances who watched great Wigan teams of later 80s and early 90s.
You carry on with your ideas of having Kelvin skerrett on the coaching staff as a forwards coach to "put some fire in their belly" and "toughen them up" or Martin Dermott teaching Sam Powell how to do a bit of a run around.
We could get hampson to teach hardaker how to jump and catch, Martin offiah to teach our wingers to run faster and Ellery Hanley could show sean o'loughlin how to score 50 tries a season.

Peter schmeicel was asked after they'd won the champions league would they beat the utd team of 68, he said yeah we'd beat them 10 nil, he was right.
If the Wigan team of last season played the Wigan team of say the late 80s they'd get 40/50.
And that's not dismissing the talents, abilitltes or qualities of the players of the past. I go to the British lions meal every year and talk to the mal Reilly, Colin Clarke and countless other great legends of the past and they were/are great. You can only be the best you can be in your era.
But
Cars get faster/safer/better
Conditions for people in general get better
People are living longer
Things move on and generally get better, nostalgia really isn't what it used to be.

PS "To All" not a reply to the enforcer
There's a great book by a Swedish physician, statistician, lecturer etc called Factfulness.
Fantastic read and In the words of Barrack Obama A hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases.
Factfulness - only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

One name comes directly to mind over the shoulder charge and getting injured,Ian Lucas,Paul Harrigan did for Lucas if i remember correctly

My memories do exist as i remember them. Just because you may not agree does not mean that my memory is playing tricks with me.

The level of attack on this forum towards anybody that has a differing view is astonishing.

Carry on in this sad state of denial and RL will die in this country. People want to see Skerrett type characters in the game, they want to see a fiery liittle Andy Gregory knocking seven bells out of an opposition forward. Its all part and parcel of a good game of RL.

Lets say thats one person badly injured by a shoulder charge then. How many players are badly injured by non shoulder charges? Phil Clarke broke his neck in a tackle that looked like a regular tackle that you see all the time. My point is that there was no common link between bad injuries and shoulder charges, not that i can remember anyway. Some of the greatest videos on youtube are of shoulder charges. The fans loved nothing better than seeing somebody get smashed by a big shoulder, especially if it was an opposition player who had been dishing it out, see David Kidwell on Willie Mason -a great hit that would result in him being banned today.

I have to say I'm with the Enforcer on this one. In truth, I've never really seen how 'attempting to wrap the arm round' which is all it takes to comply with the laws of the game has any bearing on the force of impact anyway. Many players are in favour of the shoulder charge too and were quite vocal in their opposition to its banning at the time of it being outlawed.

If I remember rightly the ruling was brought in because it was felt there were risks associated with direct contact with the head but surely the same can be said for any tackling technique if done incorrectly.

There is a point where the game becomes 'over sanitised'. I don't think we're at that level yet necessarily but continued incremental changes of this nature would definitely have us heading that way.

Ultimately, part of the attraction of any contact sport is, by definition, determined by the amount and nature of the contract. Boxing fans, for example, would soon lose interest if the fighters were only allowed to slap. RL is subject to the same diminishing returns. Remove the big hits and you remove part of the attraction. I think it's fair to say we'd all agree on that. The subjective part is how far down that track each individual is prepared to go before it starts to affect their enjoyment of, and interest in, the sport.

I’m all for the shoulder charge coming back; let’s be honest most of the time it failed miserably but when it came off it wasn’t half a belter.

Politics? Really?

I still don’t see how reintroducing mass brawls, mud baths, and Kelvin Skerret helps in anyway crowds for RL.

spear tackle

There's absolutely no way we'll go back to the 'era of the biff, whether it was a bit of a myth or the reality. People might complain about the game becoming a bit sanitised but you only have to read the horror stories of people who have played contact sports and suffered multiple concussions to understand why all sports are taking a no nonsense approach to anything that could cause a serious head injury. If the shoulder charge was still legal imagine how many players would go off for concussion assessments during games.

It might not be as exciting but lets be honest, a shoulder charge is a very poor tackle technique, generally doesn't do what most coaches want a defender to do these days (wrap the ball and control the tackle) and increases the risk of the defender getting injured too.

Yes, a good scrap can be exciting in a game but I don't think Super League has gone down the route of a punch being a mandatory red card as someone suggested earlier in the thread. I don't even think it's a mandatory sin bin over here like in the NRL.

Either way, the sport is still tough without shoulder charges, it's still exciting without punch ups and thuggery. From the lowest level right up to the top the best thing about rugby league is the excitement generated from good attacking rugby and tough players (not dirty ones).

Dwindling crowds have more to do with rugby league's inability to make itself relevant to people, particularly young people, at a time when there are so many other things (and not just sports) that are trying to grab their attention. The sport isn't competing well enough for the money available, we've lost quality players from Super League and they haven't really been replaced and the whole sport just seems to be clinging on and surviving because it's struggling to generate that 'must watch' buzz that other sports or events can create. A fight in every game won't improve any of that. In fact often when a fight happens in a game it just makes it stop start and prevents any real rugby from happening.

for me that is the biggest issue with the game, too much stop/start from too many penalties - the stop whilst hundreds (or what seems like anyway) water carriers run on the pitch at every scrum, even on cold days and then take forever to get off the pitch. The minutes taken during drop outs and the interminable replays for video ref decisions looking at it five times from every angle when it obvious from the first view what the decision is (is it me or do some videos refs give the impression that they are looking for a reason, any reason, to overturn the on field decision).


It kills the excitement when a game gets going only to grind to a halt for any of the above and all momentum drains away.

Because they were fun, the fans loved it! If you dont remember standing in the freezing cold on a dismal damp December Sunday afternoon seeing Skerrett start a mass brawl and then looking as innocent as a baby when called out by the ref then you've never lived. Those were the days of two sets of players getting stuck into one another and softening each other up. Nowadays everything is about stats instead of the good old fashioned biff.