Paul Kent: NRL’s failed wrestling crackdown exposed as clubs wilfully cheat rules to gain an edge

The clubs have outsmarted the NRL once again. PAUL KENT reveals how players are staring down the referees over the latest rule change until the whistleblowers quit.

Getting rid of the wrestle is one of the great challenges in the modern game and, so far, it is proving to be too much for the wily old heads running the game.

Much like trying to write out a new tax law, it might be impossible.

And we are poorer for it.

Sadly, wrestling and its evil consequences have been allowed to foster so much the game has reached the point where teams have figured out it is more beneficial to break a rule and suffer the consequences than it is to obey the rule itself.

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The light punishment suggests either the rule does not do what it was intended for or the penalty for infringing is not stern enough.

Either way, it advantages the offending team.

Teams are doing what they can to slow down the ruck. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

It became clear early last season, for instance, that teams got greater benefit on kick-chases by holding tacklers down and conceding one of those new six-again calls, that the League introduced to speed up the game, than it was to get off the tackled player as the rules intended.

So the NRL, an organisation that has clearly never heard of the bubble in the carpet analogy, changed it again over the summer. Make a rule to fix a problem, another emerges.

This year, they declared, any infringement within the attacking team’s 40m zone would be a penalty.

Yet already, after four rounds, the clubs have figured it out.

They have simply changed the field position when they choose to deliberately infringe.

Now teams wait until the attack is outside the 40m before it becomes a defensive free-for-all.

The NRL’s statistics, discussed at the ARL Commission board meeting on Tuesday, show ruck speed slows considerably once outside the 40m.

Some tackles are taking as long as five seconds, from beginning to painful end.

Teams are cheating in a variety of ways to effect this.

In some instances the third defender is running past the tackle and drops down on top of his two men already involved for what, basically, seems the hell of it.

Sin-binning players is the only way referees can win back control of teams using slowdown tactics in the ruck. Picture: Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images

It buys the defence an extra second or two. Why he is necessary nobody has explained.

Edge defenders are carelessly standing offside, quite prepared to have a six-again called against them because the defensive advantage is worth the extra workload.

They particularly prefer it when defending their own tryline, aware that at some point the balance of pressure flips from the defence trying to prevent a try and onto the attack, as they realise how many plays they have had without scoring.

At other times the defensive line goes early, ignoring the referee’s call of “hold”, not waiting for his call of “go” … because what’s another tackle?

They pick up one of the attacker’s legs and spin him around so he hits the ground facing his own tryline, they grab double underhooks on the ballrunner and keep him standing while turning him towards his own tryline, buying more time.

An arm is caught between the attacker’s arm and the ball.

They hold the ballrunner up in the tackle and when the referee calls held, and not until then, do they collapse the tackle to buy more time as they get off the ground.

They are all professional fouls, in the true sense, as they are committed in defiance of the rule’s true intention. And in all of them the referees are calling six-again and the coaches are telling their players to ignore it and to continue going.

Too many six-agains in a set and the referee realises he puts his own head in the crosshairs.

And the coaches know this and so they instruct their players to continue infringing until the referee quits first.

It is cynical and self-defeating for the bigger purpose of the game.

But the coaches don’t care because they get competitive advantage.

In all of them, a penalty would change the mindset.

And if it didn’t the first time, a sin-bin soon would.

But as we all know, rugby league is a fractious game and a crackdown on the tackle slowdown would create a whole new set of problems.

In the old days, before slow-motion replays gave everybody an opinion on what happened, referees would officiate the game as they saw it.

Isaah Yeo is tackled in their match against the Rabbitohs. Picture: Matt King/Getty Images

They had a feel for the game according to their own prejudice.

Some referees, like Bill Harrigan, liked “a big 10m”. Others focused on a quick play-the-ball, for instance.

Each had their quirks but, as the game grew and professionalism became the pursuit, the game began its drive for consistency, what everybody wants and nobody understands.

As the referees chased consistency from game to game and week to week the coaches realised that if every ref was going to adjudicate in the same manner then it also gave them tremendous opportunity to cheat within those guidelines.

Which is what they do.

Their right bower was to complain once a player was sin-binned, the beaten coach declaring after the game how the sin bin cost them any opportunity to win.

So the game went soft on sin bins, and the coaches rejoiced.

The referees disarmed, and the game runs amok.

Originally published as Paul Kent: NRL’s failed wrestling crackdown exposed as clubs wilfully cheat rules to gain an edge