Paul Kent: To argue against crackdown is a great disservice to the game

To argue that high tackles are simply a part of the game and to be tolerated, as most former players, many current players and a few coaches have, is a great disservice to rugby league.

Ryan Papenhuyzen was KO’d during Magic Round. Picture: Bradley Kanaris/Getty

So as far as I can tell, we are all for getting rid of the concussions in the game — we just don’t want to eliminate the tackles that cause these concussions in the game.

And as for most of the comment over the weekend, those on the NRL’s crackdown on high tackles, that can cause long term brain damage, the comment has mostly gone along the lines of: “I don’t like it, I know we’ve got to get it out of the game, but I don’t like it.”

Few seemed happy.

Watch The 2021 NRL Telstra Premiership Live & On-Demand with No Ad-Breaks During Play. New to Kayo? Try 14-Days Free Now >

Trent Barrett: “Occasionally there will be contact there. No one intentionally goes out to do it.”

Because, quite simply, it is against the rules.

Ricky Stuart: “It’s a tough, brutal sport. And if we want to take that away let me know and I’ll start recruiting different players.”

Stuart is confused between the collision and illegal high shots. Nowhere does it say a player can’t tackle his opponent as hard as he wants. There will always be a place for tough players and brutal contact.

Todd Payten: “We have taken away from the game of rugby league in the end.”

Ryan Papenhuyzen was KO’d during Magic Round. Picture: Bradley Kanaris/Getty

For attempting to eliminate deliberate high shots?

James Graham: “In no way shape or form does anyone want to see brain damage or contact with the head, but with the way our game is and the speed that it is played at, I think it inevitable that these things are going to happen.”

And when it does, you will spend time on the sideline. All to reduce the likelihood of brain damage.

To argue that high tackles are simply a part of the game and to be tolerated, as most former players have over the weekend, as well as many current players and a few coaches, is a great disservice to the game and those who play it.

The game lost its way a generation ago policing these illegal tackles. It leaves ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys to do what previous administrations should have done years back, but which they did not do because they lacked either the rugby league IQ or the courage to see it through.

Peter V’landys has stepped up again.

Some of the confusion around the comments of current and former players is understandable; it is all they know.

Modern tackling technique has changed significantly, to the point tackles that have been illegal since 1908 are now tolerated because that is all we now know.

Tackling over the ball is a modern trend. Too often the tackler’s error ends in disaster, though, and chins are clipped and brains grow foggy.

Yet rather than penalise it out of the game, we tolerated it. A side effect of the modern tackling style and its modern target area.

It only encouraged coaches to coach it more because, despite being illegal, it was effective.

This belief that high shots have always been tolerated in the game is false and deliberately misleading.

It has not.

High tackles were once an immediate send-off, without even the traditional confessional with the referee before the arm waved them off.

But over time coaches began to weave their influence.

It began with a player sent off in a losing team, only to be exonerated at the judiciary.

Over time coaches, for their own survival, blamed the loss on the referee’s mistake that left them a man down.

Jake Friend was forced into early retirement. Picture: Matt King/Getty

It was pure self-interest, a convenient decoy.

But the game listened and moved to this model to put players on report with the match review committee to sort it out with the video replay.

Soon, it became the easier, lazier or safer option.

But such was the lack of repercussions at the match review level, coaches weighed the odds and rolled the dice.

So over time the tackles crept up and everybody got so used to it that it became blasé.

It is all the modern player knows, and many of the modern fans.

Six or seven years ago I got talking to Ron Massey, who said the game needs to reward the legs tackle.

Mass was in his early 80s at the time. It had been 20 years since he coached.

But to pass it off as the ramblings of an old man in his winter years, reminiscing about the way it used to be, would be to dismiss one of the sharpest intellects to ever think about the game.

Contact with the head had become tolerated. Picture: Grant Trouville/NRL Photos

Mass was before his time.

He was already where the game was heading, which is where it is now.

Jake Friend retired a month ago from repeated concussions. Boyd Cordner still hasn’t played in 10 rounds because of repeated concussions. James Tedesco, the game’s best player, survived not his first concussion in Origin last November only to wear another one against St George Illawarra in round seven, to sit out a week to recover, and to then get another concussion in his return against Parramatta.

How long until his next concussion is his last act on a football field?

Ryan Matterson got concussed in round two and ongoing symptoms meant he could not return until round eight.

He is 26. When is enough enough?

Not long after talking to Mass, I called Bob Fulton and before I finished asking his thoughts on Massey’s comments he interrupted.

“You know what?” he said. “He’s right.”

Originally published as Paul Kent: To argue against crackdown is a great disservice to the game