NRL must start sending players off to stamp out violent acts
There has to be the point where balance is restored to the game, where referees are given the strength to act. And, thankfully, that time has come, writes PAUL KENT.
Opinion
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The agreement was made when Craig Coleman was a yappy little halfback at South Sydney and, with a keen sense for self-preservation, he proposed a contract, written in sweat, with an attack dog called Les Davidson.
“We had a deal,” Tugger always liked to say of Les, his words coming at a machine gun rate.
“I’d do Les’s talking … and Les’d do my fighting.”
It was a successful arrangement for many years, with each man superb at his craft.
As usual Tugger, from the quick streets of inner Sydney, got the best of it. Their entire arrangement was about limits and the occasional need to step past those limits in the name of competitive advantage.
If Tugger overstepped the mark then Les came to the rescue.
If Les overstepped, though, it all too often ended with an appearance at the old judiciary headquarters in Phillip St, where sin and bourbon leaked from the heavy wooden walls.
He got six weeks for headbutting in 1985 and another six weeks in 1992 for attacking an opponent’s head, three weeks for striking in 1995, among others. How much of this was Tugger’s doing has never been confessed.
Point is, rugby league was self-regulating back then.
Anybody who took a cheap shot at Tugger knew they would inevitably have to answer to Les, a crude reality that was usually more than enough to discourage late shots and the likes on playmakers.
Now, though, it has basically been open season on playmakers for years.
The game came in and cleaned up the game to the point men like Les can hardly recognise it anymore.
The problem is, the NRL got only half the job done.
With men like Les gone the shots on the playmakers returned, the snipers multiplying in a game without consequences.
Now somewhat lawless in this area, all the game had to defend itself were the likes of Andrew Johns and Johnathan Thurston campaigning, often into a vacuum, for protection for the playmakers.
A new sheriff is in town, now though.
Tariq Sims faced the NRL judiciary under a beefed up judicial system that threatened his State of Origin appearance.
Sims was the first to test last week’s ARL Commission’s edict that promised all precedents for late shots would be forgotten under a new regime of protecting the playmakers and so, last night, he faced charges of a grade two dangerous contact tackle.
It is about time the game caught up to Les Davidson’s sense of justice.
It is not a moment too soon.
Earlier, George Burgess was suspended for an eye gouging that would have resulted in wild retribution back in Les’s day but which saw nothing more than handbags and shirtfronts.
Burgess tried to turn Robbie Farah’s eyeball into costume jewellery but, such is the modern game, the Tigers could do nothing about it.
That Burgess, who pleaded guilty and copped such a sentence, but was not sent off highlights the weak refereeing that has pervaded the referees’ ranks and reveals how far they have lost their way.
Burgess should have been sent off immediately. It was a send-off in any era but this current one, when the game is supposed to be cleaner than ever.
Two nights later Peni Terepo hit Jordan Rapana so high and so severely Rapana was bubbling blood from the nose before he could even sit up.
If that had happened in Les’s day all that would have been left of Terepo once the Rabbitohs’ pack had finished would have been, in the old Peter Frilingos phrase, a left eyebrow and the tongue of his shoe.
But not only could the Raiders not enforce their own justice, the referees double downed their insult by allowing Terepo to stay on. So Terepo stayed while Rapana, who felt like he was snorkelling, was replaced with a broken nose.
At some point the game has to start sending players off again. And thankfully it has.
A phone call on Tuesday night found an angry NRL head of football, Graham Annesley.
Annesley, an old whistleblower who witnessed the Coleman-Davidson act first hand, saw too much weak refereeing on the weekend.
And in return too much defenceless opposition.
“I’m as disappointed as anybody that stronger action is not being taken,” Annesley said.
“In terms of those incidents last week, I’ve had a discussion with the referees and made it clear that where there is time before play restarts, and they have got absolute clear evidence of an act of foul play, they take the appropriate action of reporting them, sin-binning them or sending them off.”
The balance swung too far one way. A correction is long overdue.
Originally published as NRL must start sending players off to stamp out violent acts
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