Dave T
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Posts posted by Dave T
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47 minutes ago, Chris22 said:
I think Toppy is right. You can go outside of the recommended range only when a matter is referred to the tribunal and that only happens for an offence of Grade D or above.
Regardless, Knowles can have no complaints about a two match ban nor can he have any complaints if he finds himself on the bench with Bell starting, once he returns.
Grade D isn't automatically sent to a hearing. Grade D's are usually served a penalty notice. Knowles was called to a hearing with grade D last time due to aggravating factors (Cooper's injury).
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4 hours ago, Saint Toppy said:
You can't impose a ban greater than the grading limit, which for Grade C is 2 matches.
To receive a ban longer than 2 matches they would have had to have deemed the offence to have fallen into a Grade D or above category.
4 hours ago, Chrispmartha said:I could be wrong but Im sure that’s incorrect, the number of games are just guidelines and can be extended if they deemed it warrants more.
Toppy is indeed incorrect.
I'm surprised it was missed by all, but Knowles just returned from a 5 match ban for a Grade D offence which has a normal range of 2-3 matches.
It's frankly bizarre that the aggravating factors of ban after ban after ban is ignored this week.
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I don't think there is anything wrong with it. I actually think he does attempt to wrap the arm, albeit slightly delayed, but I think that's ok.
I can understand why they want to cut out what they see as cheap shots on prone players, but I'm not sure I can see anything that should be penalised under current rules.
So I have no issues with adapting rules to make things illegal, I do have a bit of an issue with refs just making a penalty up.
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I was delighted with the inclusivity element of the last world cup, but tbh, I'm now pretty peed off that the PDRL, Wheelchair and Women's World Cups beibg so linked to the men's tournament now means that they have been cancelled.
I think 2021 was a nice way of showing the world that we are inclusive and almost relaunching that element of our game, but I think it is clear for a few reasons that they should now go their own way and form their own paths. We don't need to keep them linked.
On hosts, I think we have to just accept that we have a reliance on England and Australia. But I also think that is fine.
A host nation should be staging the marquee games, but it is acceptable for Aus and England to stage some games/groups as part of that. NZ could be hosts by staging an opener, two groups, 2 or 3 quarters, two semis and a final. That means they host 17/18 games from 31 and reduces the risk somewhat.
Same with France, it can be a French WC as long as it hosts the opener, semis, finals plus French group for example.
A Pacific World Cup can have Aussie Stadiums in support. Same with PNG.
I'm not against wildcard bids that pump in money, but we are seeing ourselves get burned too many times as we desperately sell ourselves out - USA Test, USA World Cup, TWP, France WC. I don't buy that these things are as harmful externally, plenty of sports have weird things going on, but we do need to get our sh** together as we are neglecting the basics.
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I haven't read the whole thread, but I assume it has been mentioned that this is the 2nd time this tournament has failed - it was originally awarded to USA and now France.
No doubt some will look for others to blame, but the failure of our international game lies squarely at our own door.
We are pathetic.
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I'm not sure why we have tried to run before we can walk here. The festival of world cups is a nice idea, but this has to be paid for. Costs and logistics must be really challenging to stage four WC's at the same time, and as a sport we just haven't built up any partners that invest serious money to cover this.
We've grown the cup to feature more and more teams, including some that are not really much more than invitational teams, without doing much groundwork.
It really is the same old story.
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You reap what you sow.
The lack of groundwork has meant the whole international game has no real foundations.
To think we can just stage four huge world cups combined when we don't even stage proper credible internationals in the country most years is just stupid.
Our arrogance and burying our head in the sand last year led to some real average off field performance in rlwc21 and it's hard to see how France 25 could do well.
I desperate hope something can be resolved, because I'd have loved to have gone over there for plenty of games.
But tbh, I'm not far off done with international RL.
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46 minutes ago, JM2010 said:
This is exactly what should be happening. Test series against Tonga, Samoa, Australia and NZ between WCs. That gives English players and fans something to look forward to each year. When they come here they can take on France and a home nation as warm up games and when we go over we play a couple of warm up games against a Pacific Islands team that isn’t involved.
I think the main problem this highlights is that one international window a year isn't enough. Not when the game is split across hemispheres like it is.
We should have 2 windows, one with tests down under, 1 with tests here.
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1 hour ago, Gavin Harrison said:
That's not the case though. Seen several direct vontacts to head that have resulted in no card.
Clearly a red card that results in just a £250 fine is either an error on the part of the referee or the judiciary.
It had a huge impact on the game. Wakefield are not finished yet. They are clearly improving & Cas are flatlining.
It was a red card. It was a pretty blatant one, and one that the Wakey coach said they had no arguments with. He was guilty of a grade B high tackle. There is no error.
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49 minutes ago, Just Browny said:
10,600ish at Warrington v Wakefield
A lot of offers tonight, maybe could have hoped for better, but then it's a bank holiday weekend, so positive that we were in 5 figures.
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On 29/04/2023 at 18:40, gingerjon said:
Which is why you don't play the game where people can pick and choose which top level (I leave that open to debate for the match thread) rugby league they can watch because they have so much of it on their doorstep every weekend during the season.
Didn't Doncaster do ok with a couple of internationals when we held them there?
One thing I would say, last year's game was clearly never the 9k plus they claimed (remember they claimed the seats were sold out and there were huge empty sections). I thought it looked _ok compared to that, and I would add that the feedback from people who went (non-RL fans on my social media for example) was that they seemed to really enjoy it. So that's something I suppose.
I'm almost at the point of past caring about the detail, it's a waste of time and energy as a fan. They'll do what they do, I'll pick and choose what interests me. That was the World Cup Legacy for me tbh.
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11 hours ago, Trojan Horse said:
For head high on Thewlis who’s continued to run around seemingly fine.
Yes, we should only send players off if they successfully paralyse the opposition.
Wakey's coach said they have no complaints with the red card.
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12 minutes ago, gingerjon said:
No idea if they did it at Barrow but I know it happened at Aberystwyth Town Football Club back in the day cos I bought a ticket but my square remained business free.
Sounds like BS.
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1 minute ago, gingerjon said:
England v France, 8,422
Lowest non-covid England crowd since England played France in Leigh in 2015. Just over a thousand down on last year's CNAS match.
World Cup Legacy.
But, I've been criticised many times for this view, but the French national team make themselves hard to want to support.
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1 hour ago, Dunbar said:
I am always torn in these conversations as I love the gladiatorial and attritional side of Rugby League. I will take a 10-6 with a titanic forward battle over a 44-36 every day of the week.
But we have to accept that having a HIA process and praising the care that players get after a head clash but dismissing the cause of the incident is just blinkered.
And we can have gladiatorial and attritional battles without late hits and reckless head clashes anyway.
I think your last para sums it up perfectly. People need to have these conversations with cool heads. The game is still brutal despite all sorts of things now being outlawed in tackles, including shoulder charges and techniques ninja tackles, chicken wings, lifting above horizontal etc. But we have banned most of those things with little fuss (apart from the shoulder).
We can't boast that tackles are like car crashes and then not have serious conversations about incidents like those on Westerman and Coote, plus the late hits.
I thought last night's game felt like 20 years ago for a couple of reasons (I'll leave the Wheldon Rd point to another thread
), but I thought Cas were fired up and played on the edge and we had a fair bit of dirty play that needed sorting. We then had the neanderthals in commentary complaining about high tackles for foul play.
I really enkoyed last night's match, but I worry that compared to other sports it looked a bit out. I'm making this point provocatively, but it looked more like bare knuckle fighting compared to boxing.
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Just now, Dunbar said:
Yes, I noted your point last night and it is a good one.
To be honest, the more I think about it the more it has to be reckless to fly into a tackle like that and clash heads at force.
There was someone on the thread last night saying the ball carrier and tackler were equally at fault as it was an accidental clash of heads but surely the onus is on the tackler here.
As you, I am not looking for a send off but it was a penalty by the definition of the laws. For so many in the commentary and on the thread to say it wasn't suggests we are not moving along in our thinking.
Tbh I struggled with last night's game from a player safety point of view, and I worry that we are really setting ourselves up.
There were many late hits in the game (a horrible, cynical part of the game), and the commentators constantly downplayed it as nothing - ignoring the fact that the Cas winger shoots in and puts the shoulder in every game - it is his choice to do that. Similarly Watts is a regular at this. A couple were missed by the ref too.
We saw a swinging arm which caught the top of the KR player's head and O'connor is calling for us to ignore it and play on.
And then we had these two head to head contacts which saw players leave the field injured and not return, with the universal commentary that it is all perfectly fine and just an accident.
I think the similar sport have gone down a route which feels severe, but I think our approach is maybe too lenient. We just haven't stamped out late hits, and I don't think head to head is even on the radar.
Seeing Coote and Westerman in distress on the field isn't good.
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27 minutes ago, Dunbar said:
There was an incident in last night's Castleford HKR game when a penalty was given for an upright tackle and a serious clash of heads. The recipient of the tackle was on the ground for some time and had to leave the field for a HIA (I didn't see if he returned). I tried to start a conversation on the thread but here may be a better place. A couple of points.
1. Is this a penalty? The laws state that reckless or careless contact with the head while executing a tackle is misconduct. It can easily be argued that a tackler clashing heads at force is reckless. Others will say it is an accident. The majority of posters and the commentators felt it wasn't a penalty.
2. Research clearly shows that the upright tackling prevalent in Rugby League increases the chance of head injury considerably. One of the key studies showed that there was a 3.2-fold higher risk for an HIA when the tackler was upright compared to bent-at-the-waist.
I am not advocating for a change, merely garnering opinion.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8599744/
I touched on it in that thread, but this is an area where the similar sport to us has gone down a different route. That's a red card in that sport.
Interestingly there was another one a bit later that I thought could absolutely be put down to accidental as Coote did a little shuffle just before contact, but the first one I can't see any mitigation. At the moment in RL we get away with it really, but I'm not 100% sure we should.
This was a conversation that used to come up a fair bit with James Graham. His tackling style led to a decent amount of direct head contacts and I'm not sure players should have to just suck that up because of his style.
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17 minutes ago, Dunbar said:
There is a class action from former players regarding the long term effects from head injuries they suffered during their playing days.
The laws of the sport say that reckless contact with the head is a penalty... and this could easily fall into that category.
And I am not trying to change anything, I am trying to have a conversation about whether modern tackling techniques increase the liklihood of head clashes and injury.
Although it doesn't seem to be a conversation that is going anywhere so I will not bother any more.
I tend to agree with you here. Another similar sport would give a red card for that today. I'm not sure whether that is the way to go, but I do feel there is an element of recklessness to it.
James Graham used to have a lot of head clashes when he was tackling. That was because of his style. I'm not sure why players should have to keep taking those head contacts because of a tackling style.
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10 minutes ago, Damien said:
I am all for changes to the tackle height to armpit level, stricter enforcement of punishments for high tackles and better protocols around HIA and concussion with things like mandatory stand down periods and neutral assessors.
I am less in favour of the kick off change, and similar changes, because a collision is the fundamental nature of RL and any collision based sport. Its akin to saying a boxer can only punch with his weaker hand because a punch is dangerous. RL is what it is and yes we can mitigate the risks as much as possible and make people aware of those risks but there are some things I don't think we should change. Practically all sports carry a fair amount of risk inherent to the game and I don't think RL should see itself as any different in that regard.
I am open minded about the trial, and yes it may work, but this is more a general comment around this line of thinking.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of changing fundamentals here, but I like the approach to testing. I remember hating the corner flag change initially, and now it's a great change. Be interesting to watch.
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7 minutes ago, Jughead said:
I don’t think it’s anything to do with seeking variety that they’re trialling this. I think it’s an interesting byproduct of the trial that might turn out to be a good thing. I’d be interested to see how they’ve got the results that lead to the trial.
I suspect youre right, but when coming up with these suggestions surely you consider what the outcomes will be. More short kickoffs reduces the high impact collisions.
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11 minutes ago, Damien said:
I do think if teams kick as normal, for distance with the ball landing around the try line, it won't have the desired effect. 10 metres isn't going to make any difference because the attacker running on to the ball will still reach full speed before the defenders get to him and the defenders will also still have reached full speed. I can't see how that collision will be different.
I agree, I wonder if they are hoping for more variety.
If they want to stop those huge kick off collisions, they are going to have to go down the route of tap restarts, and the same for dropouts as well really.
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@Padge remember we discussed the regathering the ball point last week? The VR did explain it clearly there (your point). Far, far better communication from the VR on that one.
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When do the results get adjusted for the Salford fans clicking the wrong button?
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For a Thursday evening, that is an excellent crowd.
Morgan Knowles at the RFL Disciplinary...
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
Toppy stated you can't receive a sentence higher than the grading. You can.