Storm’s wrestling the latest step in the NRL’s battle against dirty tactics
Despite the outcry over Melbourne’s wrestling tactics, the Storm aren’t the first club to weaponise niggling as the game’s foul play evolves quicker than the NRL can stop it, writes PAUL KENT.
Opinion
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Butter finally melted in Cameron Smith’s mouth on Saturday.
The Storm were under fresh pressure over their illegal wrestling techniques all last week.
Smith, who should have been smarter, got caught on camera with a grubby ear-pulling tackle on Canberra’s Bailey Simonsson.
Smith will be hit with a concerning act notice this week.
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The NRL did not believe it could charge Smith because he can be seen grabbing Simonsson’s collar and pulling it over the ear to disguise the ear being pulled.
The NRL was not sure whether Smith pulled the ear or simply scrubbed it.
A simple statement from Simonsson might have solved that.
On top of that there are suggestions the foul goes a step further with knuckle pressure applied to the temple, a pressure point.
It almost went without notice that Smith’s teammate Cameron Munster was charged with a cannonball tackle in the same game, another illegal tactic the Storm pioneered.
The past week has provided a fascinating insight into the inner workings of the NRL and the Storm.
The war is being fought on two fronts, disguised as one.
The first battle is Melbourne’s grubby wrestling techniques that can injure opponents.
South Sydney chief executive Shane Richardson pointed to this last week. Richardson cited the Storm’s role in introducing the grapple (twisting the neck), the rolling pin (dropping a knee on opponent’s calves) and the chicken wing (twisting the arm behind the back).
Nobody knew the ears were in mortal danger.
The Storm countered with the second front.
They say everybody wrestles and they are being picked on because they just do it better than every other team. They did not address the incidents directly but instead argued it all under the broad wrestling banner.
It is an important distinction to overlook.
They also claimed it was an agenda driven from Sydney media, jealous an out-of-Sydney club is being successful. This type of paranoia was seen when Brisbane were dominating the competition.
Sympathisers claimed the Storm are so successful not because of the illegal wrestling techniques but because they simply work harder than their opponents. Nobody has thought to consider both might be true.
By lunchtime on Monday the Storm had countered.
A picture was leaked of a tackle a minute before Smith’s attack on Simonsson where Raiders backrower John Bateman has a similar dig at Smith’s ears.
Under this logic, two wrongs make a right.
Bateman was suitably aggressive when going Smith. Wind the video back just a few tackles earlier and Melbourne prop Nelson Asofa-Solomona hits up and jams his forearm into Aidan Sezer’s chest and neck.
This was the same act Richardson, the Souths boss, accused Melbourne of which started it all last week.
Bateman reacts. He gets no support from the referee and goes after the Storm players, grabbing Smith several tackles later.
By then, Bateman was already aggrieved.
In the first minute Asofa-Solomona hit him with a similar elbow to that which got Sezer, and the Souths players the week before, which stirred his anger.
The niggle was everywhere.
Fouling tactics are not new to rugby league but there seems to be a systematic approach to it that suggests coaching and makes the defence of such moves absurd.
In years gone by Tevita Pangai’s crunch on James Maloney would have been overlooked as an unfortunate accident. There is little doubt nowadays, though, that the crusher is coached and encouraged at some clubs.
It gives the match review committee no choice but to treat it as a deliberate act and suspend it.
Pangai faces four to five weeks on the sideline after being hit with a grade two dangerous contact charge.
It prompted former premiership winning coach Phil Gould to declare after the Broncos game: “Doctors and lawyers will end the game in 20 years.”
Only because coaches are already steering it that way.
The coaches appeal to the NRL for a clearer interpretation of the rules and consistency within those interpretations, in a bid to bring down their penalty count.
Instead of taking the advice under the goodwill it is offered, though, for many years coaches have used that information against the game. If these are the parameters, how can we bend the rules to our advantage within them?
As soon as the NRL identifies and cracks down on one fouling method the coaches, with the help of their jujitsu coaches, moved it along the spectrum.
What a sad state the game is in.
The Storm are countering being found by driving argument through the sympathetic or easily swayed.
Storm boss Dave Donaghy circulated a page from Manly’s 1996 annual report over the weekend which reveals a payment made to a “wrestling coach” to show the Storm were not the first.
This is irrelevant and seems obscure although, in an amazing coincidence, it emerges that Melbourne’s current football director, Frank Ponissi, was on the Manly coaching staff in 1996.
There is wrestling and there are the grubby tactics designed to injure.
And it just gets muddier and the NRL sit quietly, confused at how to fix it.
Originally published as Storm’s wrestling the latest step in the NRL’s battle against dirty tactics
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