NRL 2021: Boyd Cordner retirement shows why NRL was right over concussion crackdown

Boyd Cordner was one of the bravest players in the game and he was forced to retire. So why are we still arguing over the high shot crackdown, asks Paul Kent.

There is an imaginary line on the football field that sits on the edge of the ruck and starts wide and angles back in.

Those in the game call it the courage line.

There are only two guarantees when a player runs the courage line; its greatest benefit being it will more often help a teammate find space and the second being that there will be a sickening collision at the end of it.

Nobody ever ran the courage line better than Boyd Cordner.

That was his reputation in the game. He was that kind of player.

That’s what he did for his teammates and that is what the game lost on Monday when Cordner took that courage a step further and decided he could not live with himself if he suffered one more concussion and so he retired.

And if that is a decision the bravest among us has reached, when there was still so much upside left everywhere else in his career, then why is there still debate over the NRL’s concussion crackdown?

Cordner came home from training a week ago and could not sleep that night.

His return was imminent. He was in full training at the Roosters and the call just needed to be made about what round he would run back onto the field.

But with the reality of his return, came the reality of his return.

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Boyd Cordner was a one-of-a-kind player and his retirement is a reality check for the game and its critics, writes Paul Kent. Picture: Getty Images.

“I knew I was close to playing and I had to make the call,” he said.

“I had the day off the next day. I had all of that day to sit down with my own thoughts and I had to ask myself some really honest questions and I knew I had to answer them.”

In the end there was one question he could not shake.

“The feeling of going out and … what does the next head knock look like?” he said.

“I couldn’t get that out of my head.”

And as the words pushed out and tears welled in his eyes, a proud man coming to terms with the end, still the moaning comes from those who got upset a month ago when the referees began cracking down on high tackles in Magic Round, and who continue to argue that high tackles should not be send-offs and that the referees are making the game soft.

And today they persist even as one of the game’s greatest warriors, just 29 and with two seasons left on his contract, and who at the time of his last concussion was the current NSW and Australian captain, made the decision to retire because the game did not protect him enough when he was playing.

It’s been a tough year for the NRL, with Jake Friend also lost to retirement.

The enormity of his retirement should not only underline the importance of this crackdown but should end the argument forever, and even as we say that we know it won’t because stupidity is also forever.

You cannot educate the dull of mind.

And so instead of trying to understand and change they instead change the parameters of the argument.

And they know since they can no longer argue against brain injury they instead turn it into an argument of consistency in the referee’s interpretation, and if not that then the severity of the punishment, and they say it with a voice not faded with the ravages of dementia, which comes to all who suffer it.

This argument of consistency in refereeing decisions is flawed. Not every decision can satisfy every fan because everybody sees tackles differently. What some might believe is a high tackle worthy of a sin bin, others would argue penalty is sufficient.

We see this every weekend. If two experts in the same commentary box cannot agree on a rightful punishment, for instance, how can the game ever get unanimous support across its viewing audience?

Wade Graham is also now out indefinitely after his fourth serious head knock of the year. Picture: Getty Images.

What we can concede is that the referees are sometimes making bad decisions, but for the right reasons.

Yet nobody is prepared to live with that.

Faced with the decision to sometimes get it wrong by being too severe, or not severe enough like the game has been for years, it takes only a mild dose of intelligence to understand what is preferable.

Changing tackle technique over the years has seen a significant rise in concussions. It is not simply a greater awareness we have, or more diligent policing of concussed players.

It is everywhere in the game now.

It passed most people’s attention that on the day Cordner retired three paragraphs in The Daily Telegraph carried the line from Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy saying Ryan Papenhuyzen was “a chance” of returning for the Storm in their game against the Sydney Roosters in two weeks.

Ryan Papenhuyzen was knocked out in Round 10 and is still dealing with symptoms of concussion. Picture: Getty Images.

Papenhuyzen was knocked out in Magic Round, the weekend the crackdown began.

He is still suffering concussion symptoms, a month later.

Would Papenhuyzen have avoided a concussion altogether if the crackdown had started a week earlier?

We will never know, and Papenhuyzen is still paying for it.

This past weekend another warrior, Wade Graham, got knocked out for the fourth time this year and such was his bravery he got up and wobbled and put himself in danger of having the same things said about him that used to get said about Cordner; that he is too tough for his own good.

Graham will now take his own extended break and will seek to speak to the same doctors that guided Cordner through his recovery.

So he goes and rests while Cordner leaves us with memories of the selfless warrior, the captain who gave all he had to his team who in return helped him lift every trophy there is in the game.

Best of all, he has now given himself a better chance of remembering those moments.

Originally published as NRL 2021: Boyd Cordner retirement shows why NRL was right over concussion crackdown