Dave T

I agree. If they were targeting one specific behaviour, it would be a more focused law imo.

I'd reward them and wave play on!

I'm a clumsy writer, at work I have a copy writer to sort that stuff! But it's pretty easy to have a note/condition along the lines of: A knock on as a result of a charge down of an opponents pass, or attempted intercept of a pass will be treated as an accidental knock on. Tweak as appropriate, but the above is similar to the chargedown exception.

See you in court! I think the way chargedowns are covered is the perfect example. On its own, a kick charge down is absolutely a knock on (and a deliberate one at that), but they simply clarify that a chargedowns is legal.

Like you, I didn't really expect any controversy around this thread. I did rather expect it to go down the route of highlighting how poor the laws are written across many things. I must admit to not knowing any more when we use scrums or taps etc. The lawbook is no help whatsoever in clarifying that.

I used to love seeing the Sharks games on TV, with the Seaview in the background. It's now lost that.

The kick charge down clarification is the perfect example of why this isn't just as a couple are describing as factual. It would be so easy to have line in that a knock on from an opponent pass would always be treated as accidental knock on.

This makes zero sense. The law could have been written explicitly like that, people shouldn't have to understand that this was apparently brought in because some guy did something over a century ago. This law makes no reference to the interpretation that a couple of you are stating as factual. There is nothing that differentiates a deliberate knock on from a pass or in any other passage. That does happen with a kick charged down. The written laws should make sense.

The really simple solution here is to draft something in line with the charge down law. That's how you make it make sense. I think, everyone appears to be comfortable with no penalty being given and it being a valid defensive tactic, but rather the point being why we have so many things in the law as that either don't make sense or are just ignored. We are just really lazy in not making our lawbook reflect how rules are applied.

I do think we are capable of differentiating between intentional and accidental. Unfortunately it's not easy to find examples on YouTube as its just a scrum!

I can understand where that kind of play becomes problematic, but I think that's a harsh call tbh (in the context of we allow deliberate knock ons in defensive situations).

Union does apply it, and it's relatively straight forward, or as much as any other rule. I'd rather we just amend the wording if we are cool with this, but as has been pointed out, there are probably a fair few rewrites needed, and that'd need some effort.

Agreed. I don't like Unions approach, if you are 2 v 1 you have every advantage, so I'm OK with sticking an arm out to block a pass. But as you say, to claim that isn't an intentional knock on is weird.

They have however stuck an arm out in a 2 v 1 situation and intentionally knocked the ball forward. The way the laws are written that is a penalty and can't even be regathered to cancel it out, only an accidental knock on can be. The way things are written are not fit for purpose.

Would that be punished? How is that different to knocking the ball forward from an intercept and regathering it. That would be deemed legal (as long as it doesn't touch anything else).

We don't.

I have plenty of sympathy with anyone that holds the view that covid made it impossible for them to continue. As per one of my previous posts, I believe they had trouble accessing furlough schemes etc and it was challenging for them. I think anyone who justifies what happened as an outcome of Elstone's comments is bang wrong. It's a really bad take to justify not paying debts because they didn't feel welcome. People should be clear why they believe these players haven't been paid. It's either covid or it's Elstone.

Yeah, but the nasty RFL punished him for racism and Elstone wasn't convinced by a business plan that involved not paying people.

Having it written in the rules but not adhering to it is not rational and coherent.

He is an investor in an RL club and a sponsor of an RFL comp. He seems a touch confused. Maybe alcohol fuelled do you think?

It's weird, lazy and is just typical RL. We don't punish deliberate knock ons, but we are too lazy to change the rules.

Obviously people like this are often pretty secretive about their wealth, but I wonder how poor he and his business are at the moment? My understanding is that due to the 'unique' way TWP we're organised, they struggled to get government support through the various schemes, so costs were substantial, and they have sympathy for that. But I think it would be a little blind to ignore the fact that their start to life in SL had been a car crash and they put all their eggs in the SBW basket.

But that was always the plan? And the warning signs were there well in advance of covid. Like not really buying a squad for SL, or arranging matches properly.

Wasn't Argyl meant to be absolutely loaded? Surely in the Grand scheme of sports entertainment we were talking really rather modest numbers of millions in losses that covid caused?

I think the RFL and SL have set their stall out in recent years. Not a peep on quite unsavoury behaviour.