Rule changes are turning the game from a battle of warriors into a pillowfight
The NRL has hit an ugly all-time low with the great game now resembling more of a pillow fight than a game of warrior spirit.
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COMMENT
Protect the kicker? How about we protect rugby league from going SOFT.
It’s been another weekend of nanny state officialdom in rugby league, but that’s okay- nobody’s saying the game’s gone soft.
Why?
Because labelling it soft would imply the game still has a modicum of substance.
Sadly, rugby league has softened beyond soft, just like a sharehouse banana that shifts like a tube of toothpaste.
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After being held at gunpoint by lawyers and scientists and heaps of other industries without a cauliflower ear between them, our great game now resembles something airier and more delicate than dandelion fluff, a product a mere waft of its glory days of blood and nicotine.
Yep, rugby league is in a hyperbolic identity crisis right now, and it’s all because nobody knows what extremity it can legally squirrel-grip anymore, nor how it found a solicitor with a grasp on a good bellringer.
The kicker protection crackdown is the latest kneejerk edict to come down from the NRL, with recent weeks featuring an array of incidents that have tormented rugby league instinct and sent the old-timers feral.
Whether Zac Lomax’s Anzac Day tackle on Luke Keary, Coen Hess’s split-second tardiness on Nicho Hynes or the similar work of Sean Keppie on Tanah Boyd, the rule dictating you can’t hit the kicker early and can’t hit them late now apparently dictates you also can’t hit them on-time.
This reached maximum madness in Saturday night’s match between the Wests Tigers and Penrith Panthers when Nathan Cleary earned a penalty for a late hit that was actually so early it was almost pre-partum.
Thankfully the call was overturned on a Captain’s Challenge by the Tigers, but only after the Bunker cleared the tackler of looking at Cleary sideways.
In addition to overbaking the hip drop, punishing head clashes and silencing Josh Reynolds, the NRL’s Orwellian kicker crackdown is its latest attempt to legislate for life’s unavoidables.
Like trying to educate a boomer on the danger of online scams, you’ll never stop dad clicking on a free $1000 Bunnings voucher spelt “Bunionings”, and likewise, you’ll never stop accidents and injuries in footy.
Put simply, these new laws effectively dictate that any player who chooses to kick in general play should be afforded the luxury of a presidential motorcade.
In the fair dinkum department, the tackler might as well politely inquire where sir would like the ball to land before escorting it downfield in one of the adjoining sedans flanked by Secret Service.
And why stop there? What if the tackler accidentally clips the kicker doing up his seatbelt? Or has bad breath?
If we’re going to outlaw tackling kickers because it’s a safety issue, then why not just outlaw rugby league?
After all, studies show that almost 100% of injuries in the NRL can be traced back to rugby league, so let’s just play it safe and preserve footballers from football altogether.
Now before you anti-violence campaigners go berko, let me be clear: nobody wants chargedown merchants gifted open slather to pump a cheeky playmaker in to next week, even though the little blighters are getting too far ahead of themselves with their million-dollar packages and default Dally M points.
But nobody can deny the game has advanced a long way from the blood-soaked days when protecting the kicker was less a rugby league issue than a humanitarian issue.
In short, the little men have – and forever will – be getting poleaxed. Don’t evolve the rugby league playmaker in to a dinner-suited general cocooned behind a defensive wall, lest be served a league filled with Allan Langer water boys.
Dane Eldridge is a warped cynic yearning for the glory days of rugby league, a time when the sponges were magic and the Mondays were mad. He’s never strapped on a boot in his life, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt.
Originally published as Rule changes are turning the game from a battle of warriors into a pillowfight
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