The Shoulder charge has been banned from the upcoming weekend onwards.

I thought that was just for the WCC and international matches.

For all I believe.

There needs to be a real deterrent for attacks to the head before they start banning shoulder charges.

Does anyone in their right mind believe that had shoulder charges been banned two weeks ago Bousquet and chase would not have done what they did?

They're two nut cases that will continue to step outside the rules until the RFL impose bans long enough to make them think before they do it.

Rod Studd made a point about it on SL backchat last week, that if Chase had got half a season ban last season for the attack on Ropati he might not have made the hit on Hardaker, the penalty needs to fit the crime and no amount of banning of hits will make a bit of difference until the penalty for doing it is enough to make players not do it.

So what happens should a non head shot shoulder charge take place? Penalty? Sending off?

If they go to form loss of balls by ref, placed on report!

Just seen the directive on toal RL

[iTo all Match Officials



The RFL Board of Directors have today agreed to the Law change that will
mean that the shoulder charge will not be a legal tackle in all RFL games
with immediate effect.



Anyone making a tackle must now do so using the arms or hands. Failure to do
this will result in a penalty being awarded. This applies to "hits" on the
ball carrier, hits on a player who has passed the ball, "hitting on
suspicion" and challenges on the kicker.



I have also attached the Referee Policy with guidelines on the shoulder
charge and the an updated version of the Laws of the Game.



While I appreciate that all this is very short notice I am confident that
you will be able to manage the situation this weekend with your usual
professional approach.



Stuart



Stuart Cummings

Match Officials Director[/i

I've never left a game and thought, "it needed a few more shoulder charges". Happy to see players fronting up and making a proper tackle.

A bit of a knee jerk by the RFL & personally I don't agree with their decision. At the very least this is something that should have been brought in at the end of the season rather than after a few games.

agree that it should have been implemented at either the beginning or end of the season, like some of the more stupid rules that the RFL decided to implement

I can't wait to see what some amateur games are going to look like - as well as implementing the half a dozen new rules brought in for this season, a 15 year old ref is also expected to rule on what is, or isn't, a shoulder-charge.

I hope the YJL has plenty of willing victims to sit on their disciplinary panels!

Just watched a compilation of shoulder charges on a popular video sharing website and it has to be said that nearly all were cheap shots on a player who hadn't seen what was coming at him. Can't say I'll miss them massively.