Dunbar

If talents like Jonathan Davies , Ellery Hanley, Darren Lockyer and Joey Manu only come around once in a lifetime and I have seen them all play. I have to ask, and be honest, am I immortal... am I Highlander?

It may just be me, but I don't think Manu is anywhere close to the three you mention in this post.

I think the first of those variables is relatively easy. Most employees would change jobs for a considerable pay rise - if there is no other financial incentive involved. But the chance to live in Japan? I want to visit Japan, it is on my bucket list, but I wouldn't want to spend 2 or 3 years away from home, living and working in a foreign country can be very isolating, even if you have your close family with you. If my business wanted me to move to our Japanese office and offered me more money to do it, I would say no. All these matters are personal of course.

Winners: Storm, Warriors, Eels, Panthers, Sea Eagles, Broncos, Bulldogs, Cowboys Points: 334 Home wins: 5 Poll: Sharks vs. Cowboys

There is a lot of chat in the Aussie sports media at the moment about whether the Roosters encourage their players to leave the code rather than move to another NRL side should they want to move on or can't offer them what they want in the cap. I hope that's not true - not least because Trent Robinson has been such a wonderful ambassador for our code.

Guess you got me. I'm a big racist.

There really are far too many variables here for us to make determinations from the outside about Manu's motives. We don't, for example, know his thoughts on sushi, karaoke or indeed how bullety he likes his trains to be.

There have been some harsh things said on this site but this one takes the biscuit!

A lot to unpack there. "shown themselves up for not understanding their own sport and making excuses due to tribal loyalty." I don't see a lot of that on this thread, do you mean on here or in wider social media? "An unnecessary tackle" why was it unnecessary? We see a lot of 3rd man tackles bring a player to the ground. Are they all unnecessary? Like it of not, that is the way the game is played now. "using poor technique, which severely injured another player is a ban all day long". Poor technique is not a foul - breaking the laws of the game is a foul. "Intent doesn't come into it" apart from the fact identifying intent is stated as one of the guiding principles of the RFL disciplinary guidelines.

The tried and failed is an interesting one. If you pick your best side for an international competition and lose then will you be better off picking a side that isn't as good! I'm not sure that the England side for the semi against Samoa was the very best side Wane could have picked but it wasn't far off with the players he had available to him.

Again, I will state for the record that if the panel come to the conclusion that the tackle was reckless or careless and therefore applied unnecessary pressure to Isa’s ankle (and caused injury) then I will accept that. But I will also state that it is not an absolute fact, it is the judgement of the panel and I accept that judgement. My judgement is that not all incidents that cause injury are a foul and in the instance I believe based on the evidence that I have seen that the injury was caused by an accidental collision between the knee of the tackler and the foot/ankle of the ball carrier. I do not believe that this tackle was any more reckless than many we see in the game that have the potential to cause injury but thankfully do not. Finally, I worry that we appear to be seeking to find blame in this instance (where a player has been seriously injured) due to the outcome and not the nature of the incident itself and I think that is a slippery slope.

Out of interest. Why is it ok for you to selectively quote the disciplinary guidelines and not me?

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It does matter because in the RFL disciplinary compliance document, the underlying principles state: - Rugby League is a hard, fast, contact sport played at professional level by athletic players. - In a sport with high speed collisions there will always be injuries and players take part with this knowledge. - The disciplinary system is not intended to sanitise the sport, however, there is no place in the game for players who jeopardise the safety of others by intentional, dangerous or malicious acts. - The disciplinary system must support and protect Match Officials. They are explicitly stating that a sport like Rugby League will always have unfortunate injuries and the panel are tasked with deciding if an incident that led to an injury was a foul and whether it was intentional, dangerous or malicious. You cannot take intentional out of the equation when one of the underlying principles of the panel is to decide (in part) if an action was intentional. The opposite of intentional is accidental. I think from the three here - intentional, dangerous or malicious - dangerous is the only category that matters and if the panel come down on the side that it was dangerous (as they seem to have done) then I am happy to accept that decision but I remain convinced it was accidental.

What is interesting in this case is that Namo has been charged under dangerous contact law and the charge states: Dangerous Contact - Defender uses any part of their body forcefully to twist, bend or otherwise apply pressure to the limb or limbs of an opposing player in a way that involves an unacceptable risk of injury to that player. But the preceding charge type to this one is: Dangerous contact: A defending player, in effecting a tackle, makes dangerous contact (either direct or indirect), or uses a technique which is likely to make dangerous contact (either direct or indirect), with the supporting leg or legs of an attacking player who is being held in the tackle by a defender(s), and who is deemed to be in a vulnerable position, in a way that involves an unacceptable risk of injury to that player The latter of these two charges is the cannonball tackle. But because shoulder contact was above the thigh the cannonball law doesn't apply. But I would argue that the part "in effecting a tackle, makes dangerous contact (either direct or indirect), or uses a technique which is likely to make dangerous contact (either direct or indirect), with the supporting leg or legs of an attacking player" is probably the part that does apply here. This is much closer to what happened than the twisting, bending or application of pressure as that is almost impossible to do with a knee while effecting a tackle with your shoulder.