The pieman wrote:
i was listening to the GF on talksport with Paul Cooke and Craig Murdoch. i think it was Cooke who said he had been asked to be on the disciplinary panel, obviously he declined. he said he doesnt agree with the current laws and thus would be adjudicating against something he doesnt agree with. Made a couple of comments in the time i had it on, that this tackle / that tackle would have been fine when we played, so i cant agree with the current laws / rules re some of the tackles
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.