Haven't seen the full Sky one but seen his post match press conference interview and he readily admits his team do it as well. I think this only highlights the problem more that we have a coach who hates these kind of things but accepts his team does it too. We've reached a point where coaches who don't even want to have this in the game have players who do it, it's become a necessary evil if you want to have any chance of competing.

Can you be successful in today's game without it and taking the moral high ground of playing it clean?

If the players not in the way, wouldnt be a problem, the reffing is the problem, players feel need to do things like that because the refs dont police the ruck properly, washbrooks was a penalty because he couldnt play the ball from the correct position, jjb wasnt because he tried playing it from the wrong position

the play the ball area does need sorting, every play the ball imo you could penalize either team, its scruffy and you hold you breath awaiting a penalty one way or the other, the answer imo would be 2 refs the only problem with that is we havnt enough good refs to go round at the moment, all teams try to gain advantage but it can spoil the flow of the game,

When Sutcliffe score last night Hougton was ranting about something and I didn't have a clue what. I've just watched the highlights and I assume otnwas that on the play the ball for that try JJB was getting to his dived and dived about 2 metres off the mark and played the ball nowhere near where the tackle happened. There's so much inconsistency when it comes to penalizing moving off the mark.

Do the refs really need to be that good if 2 of them, doing half the job, so in theory should be a lot easier

Agreed. You can have a senior ref with a junior one and they only have half as much to look at as they do currently

I believe Castleford play a pretty clean game and I totally disagree it's become a necessary evil

I don't have an issue with Mcdermotts comments, it's about time it got addressed because in recent seasons there have been glimpses of football tactics (Sam tompkins springs to mind)

Milner and Mcshane in particular play far from a clean game in my opinion but i get your general meaning.

I agree, but what they would need to do, is act on what they see. If one is watching the PTB and the other the offside, then you would hope it wouldn't take too many games for the players to catch on, and consequently make for better games.

Doesn't need two refs, all the RFL has to do is instruct teams/coaches that from now on these incidents will be penalised ALL the time from minute one to minute eighty.
1. stepping off the mark/moving forward off the mark with no relevant influence from a nearby tackler (so that a mere touch/brush/hand resting on top of tackled player doesn't count)
2. Not making any attempt to move out of the way of the ruck/not obstructing the dummy half from passing in any direction.
3. Not making a genuine attempt to extricate yourself from the tackle prudently.
4. Not moving away immediately 'move' is called (if we are to continue with that)
5. Diving/faking interference.
6. Encroaching the 10m before the tackled player even has the ball through their legs never mind in the DH hands.

Penalise the cr ap out of teams that infringe, basically this will cost teams games, i don't care if the first few games are a penalty fest because the subsequent games will have to be much cleaner otherwise teams that continue to infringe will simply not be able to compete.

The rule is that you can move once the guy playing the ball has touched it with his foot. Given that no one touches it with their foot anymore its a hard one to police.

Would possibly agree with you, if it hadn't been proven in the NRL that it really does work. Im sure the RFL instruct the clubs at the beginning of every season on the points you make, but in practice just to much for the ref to deal with in such high speed sport, and nobody wants to see the game stopping and starting every 30 secs, 2 refs the way forward for me imo

A certain Mr Child's seems happy to stop the game every 30 seconds (or that's how it feels at times)!

I think everyone would agree that a quick play the ball is what teams in possession aim for, and a slow play the ball when defending.

I've said before that just about every tackle nowadays could generate a penalty, that's how bad it's got.

So, penalise the team in possession when needed, but, rather than giving a penalty against the defending side, how about simply not increasing the tackle count?
Blatant infringement of the rules would still need to be penalised.

The refs could tighten up the rules without ruining the game (even more).

Not bad idea but could be carnage with players and fans not knowing what the tackle count is. First thing they need to do is bring back the rule of playing ball with your foot. At least then it gives the ref chance to decide when teams are offside. Olso the video ref should be able to make calls ie when every person watching on sky can see a blatant head butt yet the player stays on pitch