Paul Kent: Simple solution NRL must implement to end cheap shot scourge

Cheap shots, illegally attacking undefended players and head slams are not tough. PAUL KENT reveals how the NRL can end the madness.

Jared Waerea-Hargreaves sought revenge on Tom Burgess. picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty

Jared Waerea-Hargreaves is the kind of player who takes protecting his teammates seriously, almost tender the way he goes about it sometimes.

There was a moment on Sunday when he waited by the tunnel for the last of his teammates to head up the race before following behind, leaving his post only after knowing the last one was home safe.

It was a subtle moment but speaks for what he brings.

Victor Radley follows his lead.

That is about as good as it got on Sunday, though, in the conversation about toughness and character and all those things we kid ourselves about.

Much of what happened the rest of the afternoon wasn’t tough, or particularly admirable.

The Roosters-Rabbitohs rivalry jumped the shark on Sunday.

As the hype around each instalment is fuelled by their hatred for each other, a rivalry in blood for 114 years, both sides forgot all about footy at times, lost their discipline, and the result went to the Rabbitohs who might have just held it together for longer.

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Jared Waerea-Hargreaves sought revenge on Tom Burgess. picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty

And in the dark corners where secret conversations take place nobody will ever admit it but it was clear Waerea-Hargreaves, the shepherd, was seeking retribution for what happened to James Tedesco, earlier in the game, when he slammed Tom Burgess’s head into the ground.

Burgess had clipped Tedesco and should have been sin-binned. Especially in light of the standard referee Ashley Klein set for the game.

Tedesco stumbled in the play-the-ball and had to be taken off for a Head Injury Assessment (HIA) which he failed and saw him ruled out for the rest of the game.

Burgess went on a tear.

Soon after clipping Tedesco he clipped Matt Lodge to finally get the 10 minutes he deserved but, having watched two teammates fall with little consequence, Waerea-Hargreaves did what he felt was his duty and later took Burgess out.

Some have tried to applaud the violence from Sunday. These are the people we should be careful of, the kind that don’t understand true toughness or how punishment should be dispensed.

Like the game itself, toughness has been bastardised so much in this modern game few know what it looks like anymore.

One of several spot fires that broke out on Sunday. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty

The goldythroats from radio might best keep their mouths shut. Michael Clarke, the former Test cricket captain, exposed himself with his dismissive comments on the Big Sports Breakfast that “it’s not touch footy”, and that it wasn’t “under-10s”, and that he enjoyed the violence and tried to lay all the blame at Klein’s feet.

Clarke clearly comes from that school where violence is always preferable when it is happening to somebody else.

Both coaches admitted after the game that their players lost control.

It was full of cheap shots and ill-discipline.

Five players were taken off for HIAs, at a time when the noise about concussions in the game has never been louder.

Three never made it back.

Tedesco went for a cheap shot. Angus Crichton got a tackle wrong. Burgess went for a cheap shot. Siosiua Taukeiaho a head clash and Tevita Tatola early in the game.

A couple more, including Cameron Murray twice, should have been taken off for HIAs but managed to disguise their symptoms.

Victor Radley was binned for being third man in. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty

Around that were seven sin-binned. Four were later charged, Burgess twice.

The game has lost its way when cheap shots, illegally attacking undefended men, is regarded as tough.

Too much of Sunday’s game was filled with cheap shots and, what made it worse, posturing.

Head high tackles are not tough. Swinging arms are not tough. Head slams are not tough.

It certainly isn’t tough to get in the middle of all those melees, chests puffed out like budgerigars, aware that for all the froth and bubbles nobody will actually throw a punch, so their posturing rings kind of hollow.

If players can remain so disciplined in this moment, refraining from throwing a punch to avoid a sin-bin, why not the seconds before it that actually instigate the moment?

It happens too often in the NRL nowadays. Any time the NRL re-introduces the old third man in rule it won’t be a minute too late.

While the intensity was admirable it too often took the back route, sneak attacks that impress few.

Unfortunately the game began to give up the tough days when, among other things, it allowed wrestling to become the effective way to tackle and the collision was slowly made extinct.

It ended the big collision, the game turning tackle where a malevolent little backrower, Steve Folkes for example, would get up and under the ribs of an opposition forward and knock the wind out of him as he knocked him off his feet.

They were momentum changers, sometimes square-ups, but in each instance the intended victim saw it coming and had the opportunity to defend himself.

A natural justice existed in the game back then.

The unwritten rule said players were allowed to dish out as much punishment as they felt obliged to inflict, while always aware that what goes around also comes around.

That didn’t happen Sunday.