How Melbourne manipulate the media and the referees to get away with wrestling

The Storm are the masters of wrestling in rugby league and PAUL KENT has the inside story of how they manipulate the referees, the media and the rules to get away with it.

ME web art for kent column by boo bailey

• CRAWLEY: Why refs are helpless before Melbourne’s might

• WE’RE OK: Storm say NRL let them do it

Exactly nobody in the history of rugby league ever walked out of a footy ground and said: “Great game, just wish I saw more wrestling.”

Yet every NRL team’s success depends entirely on its ability to wrestle.

It is the perfect example of the confusion the game has created; nobody wants wrestling, but nobody can win without it.

And the game does not know what to do about it.

Small wars are being fought all around the game at the moment.

South Sydney boss Shane Richardson became a minor hero this week when he had the courage to put his name to a sentiment that is widespread throughout the NRL.

Coaches and club officials at other clubs have privately contributed to Richardson’s weighty argument.

The Storm have hit back with a passive aggressive campaign kept largely private. Journalists reporting the argument have been barraged with texts.

A Storm-friendly reporter will receive a text from one of several Storm officials that begins along the lines of “You’re a better journo than that …”

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Melbourne have come under fire again. Photo by Tony Feder/Getty Images.

Those viewed as unfriendly are called a disgrace and accused of running an agenda, or of being another club lackey. For some, this week began with the first and ended with the second.

Storm football manager Frank Ponissi called Richardson this week to complain.

Clubs are sick of asking the NRL to deal with it. One coach sent the NRL 32 clips of illegal Storm tactics, from two games, and received no response. Another coach sent in more clips and, worse, discovered the NRL told the Storm what he did.

What chance him sticking his head up again?

Confusion is rife and a chief reason is there are two kinds of wrestling.

There is the simple wrestling designed to slow the play-the-ball down. Slowing the tackle has been around since Dally Messenger threw his first hospital pass but now it is systematic and practised.

Then there is the other wrestling designed to injure the opponent.

Richardson has no doubt the Storm are deliberately setting out to injure opponents.

Nobody slows the ruck down like the Storm. AAP Image/Darren Pateman.

“Something needs to be done,” Richardson said to Fox Sports James Hooper.

“Who invented the crusher tackle, who invented the chicken wing, who invented the rolling pin?

“We were furious afterwards. It’s not in the spirit of the game.”

Richardson pointed to this week’s version, Cody Walker’s tackle on Tui Kamikamica where Kamikamica led with an elbow into Walker’s chest.

He charged it was deliberate and the Storm countered by claiming it was an accident.

The Storm have said nothing about Channel 9 commentator Phil Gould, who casually commented during the coverage that he saw the Storm practising it in their warm-up.

There was a time when such an attack would have drawn an immediate penalty but, nowadays, referees are so busy looking for so many illegal moves from the defence they have taken their eyes away from the ball carrier.

The Storm are under siege, not unfairly, but they are not the only club fouling opponents.

I spoke to a coach at another club who does not want to be dragged into this unholy slanging match but has clear understanding of what is happening.

He spoke of the “grey area”, that moment where all coaches ultimately arrive at in their coaching careers.

The grey area is the simple difference between right and wrong. At some point coaches, he said, face a moral decision whether to take that extra step in search of victory or to remain within the rules.

Some have and some have not.

“We have a moral choice whether we want to play within the spirit of the rules,” he said.

“Wrestling coaches don’t have that moral choice. It’s what they do in their sport.

“But it’s not our sport. If you hand over control to the wrestling coaches they will take it over.”

Is the way the Storm play in the spirit of the game. Photo by Kelly Defina/Getty Images.

Bennett has been a fierce critic of Melbourne’s tackling since the moment Alex McKinnon broke his neck in a Storm tackle gone wrong. But he is burned out by the endless debate.

Bennett has remained one of those coaches who resisted the urge coaches to drift into illegal tactics, even if it is to the detriment to his team.

Such moves are disguised and deliberate.

The first tackler will catch his opponent, the second secures him and the third tackler will circle behind the ballrunner and sniper him from behind, diving hard into the unprotected legs.

The third tackler can have another job, too.

Often he will then collapse his hips and drop on the calves of the tackled player and roll away, dragging his body over the heels and twisting his opponent’s ankle.

Elbows are being dropped into the flashy parts of the flesh, such as the groin or thigh, with pressure. Sometimes to the side of the head.

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Legs are twisted. They search for head control, choke holds.

Aware the NRL will not charge them because it is not initial contact, players will take a second grip around the neck after the ballrunner has been caught, or sometimes the head, and then hogtie the player to the ground.

Players are instantly vulnerable once their head and neck are being grappled and usually submit immediately, under the rule that where the head goes, the body follows.

And it all looks accidental.

The great test for the game is how it untangles the wrestle out of the game.

NRL boss Todd Greenberg confirmed it is a problem the game must address.

“We will absolutely be looking at ways to eradicate wrestling and to eradicate contact with the head and neck in the future,” he wrote.

The Storm wrestle in the ruck. Photo by Kelly Defina/Getty Images.

The quickest way to eliminate the wrestle is to penalise it out of the game. Have the referee call held and if the tacklers don’t immediately release the ballrunner they are penalised.

If the tackle collapses after the call of held, another slowing tactic designed to look like an accident, then penalise that too. And when players don’t cop the tip, sin bin them.

And then follow that up with a match review committee schooled on wrestling techniques who can identify the trickery and charge the players.

It will force change, from the catch and wrestle tackle that dominates now and return it to the hit and drive style that dominated for almost a hundred years.

It will cause enormous uproar, some coaches will complain, and the NRL will need a certain bank of character to see it through, but the game needs a circuit breaker.

Eventually coaches will have no choice but to submit.

That might make a nice irony.

Originally published as How Melbourne manipulate the media and the referees to get away with wrestling