Tackle height law change confirmed

[Griff]

31 minutes ago, Wakefield Ram said:

I didn't say injury only, but if the number of substitutions are reduced, there'll be fewer 18st props who can only play 20 minutes that was more the point. 

And yes I'm sure the RFL won't listen to us. 

Not sure that'd work as well as you think.

You'd be better putting a weight limit on the players.

[Harry Stottle]

5 hours ago, Griff said:

"Constant refreshing of behemoths" ?

We only have eight interchanges.

"We only have eight" yeah, far to many.

[Harry Stottle]

4 hours ago, Wakefield Ram said:

In the olden days and for many years, think it was 4. There's no reason it should be 8 or 12 as it was before. Subs used to be mainly for injuries, not because players couldn't play 80 minutes. 

I remember when there wasn't any, then it went to two (I think), and teams would have one forward and one back on the bench, once used that was it, no going off to catch their breath after a gruelling 10mins, I just don’t get all these advocates of making the game 'safer' when they advocate bringing on big fresh players regularly, let fatigue play its part as it should do, if we reduced interchanges drastically then coaches would be looking for player's with a better aerobic capacity to last longer, but that has just been bhuggered with the daft cumulative minutes rule, which just goes to show these law makers don't have much reality or common sense.

[Harry Stottle]

3 hours ago, Griff said:

We ditched "injury-only" substitutions because whether a player can continue is a judgement call.  It could result in players exacerbating injuries unnecessarily.

Massive backward step imho.  Obviously you disagree and that's fine.  We don't have to agree, particularly as the RFL won't be listening to either of us.

You don't reckon the game would be a safer place with less subs, Andrew John's thought so he wanted it reducied to 6 then further down over the seasons. 

[JohnM]

Can anyone with any real expertise in this area say if fatigued players are more ot less likely to suufer injury the greater the fatigue? 

[Midlands hobo]

6 minutes ago, JohnM said:

Can anyone with any real expertise in this area say if fatigued players are more ot less likely to suufer injury the greater the fatigue? 

 I'm not an expert. However as we were always told in coaching courses skill breaks down under pressure and fatigue. So if a player is fatigued they are more likely to tackle incorrectly and get injured.

[Griff]

34 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

"We only have eight" yeah, far to many.

The point, which you did not take, is that eight is far from "constantly refreshing behemoths." 

[Griff]

1 minute ago, Midlands hobo said:

 I'm not an expert. However as we were always told in coaching courses skill breaks down under pressure and fatigue. So if a player is fatigued they are more likely to tackle incorrectly and get injured.

Quite.

[Griff]

15 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

You don't reckon the game would be a safer place with less subs, Andrew John's thought so he wanted it reducied to 6 then further down over the seasons. 

No.  

[Midlands hobo]

38 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

You don't reckon the game would be a safer place with less subs, Andrew John's thought so he wanted it reducied to 6 then further down over the seasons. 

This is actually a very interesting question. If we assume the notion that fatigued players means smaller impacts then the evidence should show a decline in likelihood of HIA the farther you are from kickoff. With a small blip after a try or half time. Does this appear in any of the studies? In the NFL kick off have been highlighted as the main risk and they are slowly morphing them. RL could simply bin them off and have a 20m restart or move the defensive line ahead of the kicker to reduce the run up.

[gingerjon]

12 hours ago, JohnM said:

Can anyone with any real expertise in this area say if fatigued players are more ot less likely to suufer injury the greater the fatigue? 

Fatigue causes injuries and can lead to injuries that would be minor being more severe.

And that is before you get to the bit about tired/fatigued players losing both mental and physical capabilities (in a rugby league context) to tackle fairly and safely.

There's a whole bunch of articles, scholarly ones whose summaries I need to run through google translate, about it.

[JohnM]

Thus it may well be that reducing the number of interchanges may increase injuries.  In my highly subjective view, player fatigue MIGHT result in poorer technique, thus increasing the risk of injury to the tacker as well as the tackled.

[Harry Stottle]

28 minutes ago, JohnM said:

Thus it may well be that reducing the number of interchanges may increase injuries.  In my highly subjective view, player fatigue MIGHT result in poorer technique, thus increasing the risk of injury to the tacker as well as the tackled.

In effect if you think about it, the players who 'regularly' get interchanged are the ones who can cause the most damage the 'big un's' except for the hookers for tactical reasons, the big lads are their to cause the most impact in both attack and defence brought on at regular intervals - except for injuries - to do exactly as they are trained/coached to do run hard and hit hard in short bursts. 

The majority of the players on the field are on for the full duration of 80 minutes, how much fatigue do we see from these super athletes who get the best of  training, conditioning and supposedly lifestyle I will suggest not a lot! I marvel at post match interviews at the number of player's being interviewed after a hard fought contest seemingly not out of breath and not a bad of sweat anywhere to be seen, not exactly knackered wouldn't you say.

In my opinion the interchange laws, are there soley for the utilisation of the big 10/15 minute guys - the ones who can cause the most damage, as I eluded to earlier reduce the interchanges and the shape and size of the player's will change to accomodate the requirement.

[redjonn]

3 hours ago, gingerjon said:

Fatigue causes injuries and can lead to injuries that would be minor being more severe.

And that is before you get to the bit about tired/fatigued players losing both mental and physical capabilities (in a rugby league context) to tackle fairly and safely.

There's a whole bunch of articles, scholarly ones whose summaries I need to run through google translate, about it.

I can see that fatigue may cause poorer technique and where higher tackling is allowed then the poor technique may result in head contact.  That would be for me because of the result of muscle memory or repetition of tackle technique over the years of a players career.  The instinct to tackle as you have previously and fatigue making the likelihood of poorer technique leading to a head impact.

If the repetition over the years is at a lower tackle then fatigue will mean poorer technique but that would by instinct be lower and less likely to the head shot because of fatigue of the tackler.

That is in the case of tackling when fatigued, the fatigue is not the underlying cause but the repetition or muscle memory of the type of tackle allowed. If having to tackle lower then even if fatigued the resulting poor technique is less dangerous to the tackled player.

It is a different situation of having bigger power players coming on for the 15min stints for high impact collisions against the more energy sapped or fatigued players.  Here I think is an issue with high number of interchanges.

 

 

Edited December 14, 2023 by redjonn

[Griff]

2 hours ago, Harry Stottle said:

In effect if you think about it, the players who 'regularly' get interchanged are the ones who can cause the most damage the 'big un's' except for the hookers for tactical reasons, the big lads are their to cause the most impact in both attack and defence brought on at regular intervals - except for injuries - to do exactly as they are trained/coached to do run hard and hit hard in short bursts. 

The majority of the players on the field are on for the full duration of 80 minutes, how much fatigue do we see from these super athletes who get the best of  training, conditioning and supposedly lifestyle I will suggest not a lot! I marvel at post match interviews at the number of player's being interviewed after a hard fought contest seemingly not out of breath and not a bad of sweat anywhere to be seen, not exactly knackered wouldn't you say.

In my opinion the interchange laws, are there soley for the utilisation of the big 10/15 minute guys - the ones who can cause the most damage, as I eluded to earlier reduce the interchanges and the shape and size of the player's will change to accomodate the requirement.

What's this 10/15 minute thing?  Players who only play for 10 or 15 minutes ?  Surely you'd need six of those to cover a game?   That's five substitutions to cover one position.   This is nonsense, Harry.  

[Harry Stottle]

15 minutes ago, Griff said:

What's this 10/15 minute thing?  Players who only play for 10 or 15 minutes ?  Surely you'd need six of those to cover a game?   That's five substitutions to cover one position.   This is nonsense, Harry.  

It's not to far away Griff, I was looking at some stats of the England players last season in all games played in '23 Tom Burgess averaged 38 mins and Chris Hill was not much different.

As I say in my opinion the interchange laws are there for these type of guys, a lot of teams carry 3 big guys for rotation that's 6 interchanges for starters, the majority of players do the full 80 mins.

[Griff]

2 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

It's not to far away Griff, I was looking at some stats of the England players last season in all games played in '23 Tom Burgess averaged 38 mins and Chris Hill was not much different.

As I say in my opinion the interchange laws are there for these type of guys, a lot of teams carry 3 big guys for rotation that's 6 interchanges for starters, the majority of players do the full 80 mins.

So three times what you said.

I'll put that down to exaggeration.

Worth pointing out here that it's the big lads who do all the work.  It's likely they'll get tired a bit quicker than your outside backs.

[bobbruce]

On 14/12/2023 at 12:22, Harry Stottle said:

It's not to far away Griff, I was looking at some stats of the England players last season in all games played in '23 Tom Burgess averaged 38 mins and Chris Hill was not much different.

As I say in my opinion the interchange laws are there for these type of guys, a lot of teams carry 3 big guys for rotation that's 6 interchanges for starters, the majority of players do the full 80 mins.

They do about 20 mins but baring injury the player that comes on does the first 20mins in the second half so it’s only 4 interchanges. 

[Harry Stottle]

15 hours ago, bobbruce said:

They do about 20 mins but baring injury the player that comes on does the first 20mins in the second half so it’s only 4 interchanges. 

How many times do you see backs on the bench Bob? Its usually 3 forwards and an interchange hooker the coach usually has 3 forwards sharing "on-field" time = 6 interchanges.

[Griff]

52 minutes ago, Harry Stottle said:

How many times do you see backs on the bench Bob? Its usually 3 forwards and an interchange hooker the coach usually has 3 forwards sharing "on-field" time = 6 interchanges.

What's your point?

It's certainly not that forwards are on the field for "10/15 minutes" a game.

[Harry Stottle]

23 minutes ago, Griff said:

What's your point?

It's certainly not that forwards are on the field for "10/15 minutes" a game.

To many substitutions.

[Griff]

2 hours ago, Harry Stottle said:

To many substitutions.

We don't agree. There are too few.

[phiggins]

9 minutes ago, Griff said:

We don't agree. There are too few.

It's a difficult balance to get. There's the argument that less substitutions leads to fatigue which leads to injury, but too many would increase the impact of each collision. I think if you increase the number of interchanges allowed, then you'd also have to do something else like reducing distance a defence retreats from it's current 10m.

[Harry Stottle]

11 minutes ago, Griff said:

We don't agree. There are too few.

OK leave it at that.

[Harry Stottle]

1 minute ago, phiggins said:

It's a difficult balance to get. There's the argument that less substitutions leads to fatigue which leads to injury, but too many would increase the impact of each collision. I think if you increase the number of interchanges allowed, then you'd also have to do something else like reducing distance a defence retreats from it's current 10m.

I would reduce them both, that would put the emphasis back on the offense, the attacking lines would need to be deeper, maybe we would also get less of the contentious 'forward' passes that happen so often.