Dave T

I think the RFL are pretty clear about what you can't do and why, and I think its really simple to never be penalised for this in your whole career, and I'd say 99.9% of players never will. Interestingly, I think Horne actually slowed it down more with his mucking about!

TBH, it looks to me like they have just looked at the incidents and have rather accepted that Martin's was very little: "The panel concluded that this incident does not meet the criteria for Unnecessary Contact as per the regulations, describing the contact as “de minimis” meaning virtually nothing"

The thing to be crystal clear on here though is that the agreement to bring in IMG was the clubs. The agreement to approve reimagining RL was the clubs. The agreement to go with grading was the clubs. And if we nip back a few years, the decision to go with licensing, was the clubs. The decision to change their mind a few years later, was the clubs. And Super 8's, the clubs. And so on. And all of the above is fine, I'm perfectly happy that the clubs get their say, but doesn't it strike you as odd that they keep changing direction every 3 years or so.

Is there a video of the Martyn one, because the edited clip I saw, it looked pretty much nothing in Martyn's i.e. a shirt tug rather than a lifting of the player.

Let's be clear here though. The tackler can't pick up the player. That isn't his role. You don't get to tackle the player and then pick them up and control the ptb.

What I would say here is that there is only a split second between the tackler getting up and him pulling the ball carrier. Its not like he has lay there for 3 or 4 seconds. Watch it with the time running, its less than a second. So I think to claim there is time wasting is odd.

You can of course choose to do whatever you want with your time, and if you dont like the sport, it is definitely time to move on and do something else. But this just smacks of sulking because something has gone against your team.

Why didn't you question your support when other players were banned for it?

It can't work like that. What happens if next time somebody has a broken neck and the tackler decides to just lift them like a rag doll because they can't control their discipline?

This is possibly the easiest thing not to get banned for.

This one became more interesting the other night though, and is probably a perfect example of the frustrations that fans, players and coaches have. Tai fumbled a catch over his line versus Hull and then grounded it with the backs of his hands. The ref sent it up as a Try, and was overruled as the VR said it was intentionally grounded. Yet nobody grounds the ball intentionally with the backs of their hands. There were a lot of similarities with those two incidents, both saw a #### up and then the body on the ball. One saw a decision of no grounding, one saw a decision of grounded. Both had been sent as a try from the ref. Neither was an orthodox grounding, and both followed an error. We exacerbate the problem by ignoring some written rules, and then adding in interpretations of things that arent written. The Leeds disallowed try the other night just feels a weird decision instinctively. I dont have an issue with the refs, as long as I've watched RL, fans have asked who the clown is that day, this isn't new, and people used to hate Whitfield, and others will still talk about #### ups from Russel Smith in 1994 or Ganson at Cardiff and so on. But the governing body and the rulebook owners just dont help the refs imo when they have so much scrutiny. I'm a fan of simplifying things as much as possible (on the Wembley incident, I think you should have to use your hand/arms to ground it), I'd scrap this nonsense around regathering the ball with a full grip, why is that necessary? I dont think the authorities give the refs a chance tbh. And then we just see bad decisions like the Cas v Wigan one.

To an extent, all you can do is improve your numbers and hope the outcomes follow. Improving the numbers and getting skilled negotiators hopefully leads to that competition you refer to.

I must admit, I dont have too much of an issue with players speaking to the ref. Its up to the ref to manage that. Players absolutely used to talk throughout the match to the referees who are being held up as stricter from yesteryear.

To add further to this point, these comments are from Matt Dwyer (IMG) from his interview with Martyn Sadler 3 years ago: "What is particularly attractive here is that there is a real willingness to want to bring in a partner to help them drive the next stage of growth in the game. That was probably a large part of the attraction for us, as was the strong realignment. We feel that the with the expertise of IMG and Endeavor, we are in an excellent position to be able to help the game grow." "They have been down the path of private equity before and that is an incredibly topical conversation at the moment. But what they want from us is the skills and expertise that we bring in growing sports and growing revenue streams." “IMG Media, where I sit, this is the part where we will look at the competition structure. We have our digital agency called Seven League, who will be doing the digital transformation of the league. Then we have the brand and marketing agency 160over90, which will be doing a lot of the re-imagining of the sport. What is unique to a company like IMG and the broader Endeavor is that we can bring that wide range of expertise to the table." “In terms of the immediate needs, private equity funds is not what the game needs. They need the expertise to grow the game. Like any business, you want to sell your business when you can get the appropriate value for it. Super League flirted with the idea (of private equity) previously but they then realised that they don’t need funds to do what they need to do, but they do need expertise. Whether that will change going forward, I don’t know. We could have had an equity element like those examples, but that wasn’t what was needed. What the sport needs now is the biggest sports and entertainment company in the world providing its expertise."

I think this is spot on. There is no magic formula here that says, if we do x, we'll get y. And this is why you need to do all the right things, best practice to get on board with the broadcasters, sponsors, investors. I suppose the question then is do you have more faith in working with industry experts like IMG, or are you putting all your faith in an RFL that is under-resourced and under-funded?