Quote: bedfordwarrior "And this I’d suspect is a big problem. The disciplinary procedure might be in a right old mess, but moving ahead it’s not going to be helped if that sort of viewpoint has sizeable sentiment and has an input on decision making as it will just tie it all in knots and lead to a lottery of outcomes.
As I said in my introductory post the other day, I follow both League and Union and the exact same arguments are had currently in both games. The officiating and what now gets penalised. What you can and can’t do. Wailing that the games gone soft. Opposing camps on how many games a player should be playing. Etc etc etc. I see plenty of people argue that incidents where swinging arms that hit the head should be fine, or like last week plenty of comments about Bateman’s red and whether it should have been, and just shake my head.
Some of the officiating might be over-zealous and getting things wrong and needs to improve. I fully accept that there are a lot of moving parts involved and sometimes accidents/incidents happen and you can’t and don’t want to eliminate all of the competition and ability to tackle. But, more often that not, a bigger problem is those involved being unwilling to adapt. Players have to learn to stop bloody clouting people in the head. The height of the tackle and the collision is coming down, whether people like it or not. That might lead to “softer” defence and more metres and more tries etc. and less of smashing into each other and what a lot of people think Rugby is built on. But we’re all on a path now.
With the knowledge and awareness and spotlight on concussion and welfare, and the potential ramifications both legal and health (brain injury, dementia, MND, etc), the direction of travel is only going to go one way and it is inevitable. Both codes of the sport and those involved in it – players, coaches, media, fans - need to wise up. Otherwise I do fear for Rugby as an entity in the future.'"
A lot of what you say makes sense and I think the vast majority of fans are rightly against smacking players in the head, that has always been the case.
I think the major issues are more around the marginal tackles, such as where a player's arm hits the opponents upper arm or shoulder and rides up into the head or where a player starts to make a tackle and the opponent starts to go down and tends up being hit high. I get the duty of care etc but often it is a split second where a player goes in to make what they intend to be a fair tackle and circumstances outside the tacklers control make it a bad tackle.
The biggest issue is the sheer inconsistency of officials/disciplinary which is what riles a lot of fans, there will never be a perfect system but allowing two and three appeals looks bad and points out that the original decision making was questionable. The whole disciplinary system needs a full overall and the officiating needs to be more consistent and for that I think the referees need stronger guidance as to what should and should not be punished and be more accountable for their decisions. And don't get me started on the video "assistants" ....
