The Blues Ox

Ok some boring ones because he was still my fav Fax player to watch for the past couple of seasons. Favorite memory of your time at Halifax? Best Teammate? Worst Teammate? What do you think went wrong last year at Fax despite finding good form in the cup but producing some really slack performances in the league culminating with the dire showing against Swinton at home?

The experts say that there is around about a 3 times more chance of getting concussion as a defender rather than an attacker. I believe this will increase with the new laws. Personally I think we will see an increase in concussions and back injuries which is why I am against it and looking at it from a player welfare perspective. From a coaching perspective I think it offers a bit of intrigue to see how teams adapt to it, I'm think of how quick you should now be able to hit the deck winning the tackle and get a quick play the ball or how defenders will now struggle to wrap the ball up so it gives you more attacking options from offloads.

I honestly can't see it, Ive said many times in this thread that most of the concussions I have seen in my time coaching and playing at the amateur level are to the defenders rather than the ball carrier. I think when measured then maybe we see a reduction in numbers for the type of tackle they are wanting to prevent but when measured we will see an increase overall in concussions. Another thing which makes it hard to track is that amateur clubs may follow concussion protocol but the concussions themselves are not recorded so its near impossible to get actual numbers. Just following on from my reply to frank, and following what Dunbar has said, we have seen rules brought in that are designed to speed up the play the ball with less ground wrestling and now with these new rules it seems this will make for less amount of dominant tackles and maybe for more offloads so what we are doing is increasing the amount of fatigue that the players will be under and this along with the new legal tackle areas that could also see a big increase in the amount of concussions. This petition seems to be about non contact in u10's rugby which to me seems a good idea although as I said on the other thread, I also wouldn't have been against simply reducing the space between attackers and defenders but non contact encourages my ball work which is brilliant.

I wonder how they are going to enforce this as there are competitions that run through December and January.

At the end of the day a lot of it is about timing and good fortune. Some would argue that Wakey have shown a lack of ambition for a number of years and if these new criteria had come in a season or two earlier then Trinity would have been in danger of going out of business had they failed to make the cut.

Reading the petition this is purely regarding the removing of contact below under 10's isnt it? Personally I think its not a bad idea although I would also have been in favor of reducing the space bewteen defenders and attackers as an alternative. I think non contact will encourage a lot more attacking work with the ball which is not a bad thing.

It seems pro and semi pro will be in 2025 but Ive not seen anything mentioned about the womans game as some of those teams could now be classed as semi pro.

Its going to be a total technique change for players and coaches and its not even a slight one. Watching the video and then watching any game you can see how many tackles would be given as a penalty under the new rules. You might get an hour or two a week with your players in the amateur game and trying to change up technique in such a short time is simply not happening. There is also the point that a lot of safe tackle technique videos are now illegal tackles so how do you go about teaching safe tackle technique to juniors when for the moment we are just winging it. This shouldn't be underestimated what a huge change this is.

But they already tested it, what do they think is going to be different about this new test this coming season?

I don't like the Fax logo but the shirt looks better than this years offering.

The cynic in me says its because the amateur game is really not that important to the RFL and they know what a mess the games are going to be so they give the pro players 12 months to get ready for it.

This makes me wonder if the RFL could be opening themselves up once again with this rule change. There is a very clear study that states the defender is more at risk and with these new rules that will be increased and if what a lot of us think is going to happen actually does then where does the RFL go from there? I always laugh when I see some of the pro's on twitter telling people they knew the risks. Personally I didn't have a clue and used to think it were funny if one of my team mates or opponents was a bit rubber legged after a head knock. I obviously knew there was a chance of injury and suffered a broken leg myself and just one mild concussion but I had no idea that some of my team mates who suffered multiple concussions would pay the price for that later in their lives. The big question in the case is if the RFL knew more about it but did nothing. From case studies that were done on impact injuries I would suggest that they certainly knew more about it than their players. I asked this previously as well, I reckon the way most players carry the ball in to impact would have at least half of the ball unavailable for contact. I am also worried from a coaches point of view about how we go about implementing these changes, a lot of our work in training involves 2 players making contact upstairs to control the tackle and trying to get players, some who have played over 10 years or more, to even make this slight adjustment is going to be a nightmare. I am guessing the only support we get at amateur level for this will be that video so the first few games are going to be a mess until both the players and the ref's adjust.

reduce the risk of cuts, bruises, and like one poster mentions, cauliflower ears. They really aren't when it comes to concussion. One interesting thing about these new rules and not sure that it has been mentioned, its going to be pretty hard to wrap the ball up from this point given the contact points in the video. On the rules themselves I fully expect to see an increase in the number of recorded concussions at amateur and junior level following these changes. I also know a number of prop forwards from the 80's/90's that would be loving the fact that the defenders would now have to dip in front of them. Looks like its a good time to work on nose re-alignments.

Yeah a lot of people think that scrum caps and such protect against concussion but its not the case.

I watched the video and had to double check that it had not been posted by a parody account.

There are none so blind as those that refuse to see.

For me I think a few changes are needed. Firstly they have to get rid of any section that does not allow a club the possibility of scoring full marks. Secondly it really should not be that easy to be classed as a Grade A club, I think everyone in the game would acknowledge that huge improvements need to be made to stop the game dying its slow death but with the bar so low we will go back to medicoracy within two or three seasons. In its current state there really should not be more than 3 or 4 A graded clubs. Thirdly I do think there should be an element of promotion and relegation via on field results and a B for a B grade team no matter the grading scores would still make a point that on the field is still important and there is still that possibility that a lot of Championship teams could push on with an extra 1.5m or so and make large improvements.

The problem with setting the bar so low is that within a couple of years it is possible that there is 12 grade A clubs and then that in itself will stop teams below that striving to improve because there is such a low percentage chance that they move to 14 teams because of the finances, and the teams already with the grade A's can just tread water with very little incentive to keep improving. The metrics of the system are very clearly not well thought out.

So if the RFL are rejecting appeals this year because it's unfair, do we take it they will do the same next season? I can't wait for the gradings to come out next season and teams to start planning only for multiple teams to then submit appeals. If anything its going to add some drama to the new season, maybe they could do a I'm a Celeb style TV show for the announcements for entry to SL. "Bradford.........It could be you" "Leigh...........It's not you"

I agree, I think you have signed well but some fans of other teams are getting a little bit carried away.

You miss the point, the only thing that does seperate some clubs is catchment areas hence why I think its a stupid metric to measure anything.

Ive watched both Ben and Connor for a number of years at Fax and I would say both would hold their own at the lower end of the Championship but both are out of their depth anywhere near a play off team and there is good reason why both found themselves playing in league 1. Get a good supporting cast around them and you never know but it never really happpened for them at Fax and both were made to look decent playing alongside the quality of Murrell.

I totally agree that the whole picture is important but I also don't think teams should be artificially propped up on the scoring because of the some random catchment area metrics where it is not possible for teams to improve their scoring. London maybe ranked 24th but the reality is they probably should be even lower. Good on London doing the near impossible to gain promotion on the pitch but the reality was they were the least prepared of any club in the playoffs for that scenario and would have likely been coming straight back down anyway. It's sport and it happens and they deserve this season because they earnt it but unfortunatley from next season we go away from been a sport where on the field is the main importance.

Its hard to compare much with leigh as they were a total anomaly and the stars aligned for them to basically put together a top 6 SL team in the Championship and you can't see that happening again for a very long time. I agree Wakey look better than Fev though and Im really not sure the thinking of those that think it might be tight at the top, just one look at the quality through the Wakey squad and you have to think something has gone majorly wrong if they don't top the league. I'd also argue that Fev could have made changes last season and did bring a player or two in but I am not sure there were the players available and to be truthful when you dominate the league in the fashion they did you can't really blame them for not wanting to spend any more money.

Im clearly discussing attendances and catchment area and nothing else. London are better rewarded catchment area wise than say Fev who are penalised on catchment area but still manage to achieve much bigger crowds with that smaller area. In my head that all seems a bit backwards and the only way I think it should be included is for new teams rather than established teams. It all seems a bit strange that we suddenly get the IMG scoring system and we can forget decades of under performance in those areas by London(not only them obviously but that was my original discussion) and they will start looking to increase crowds.