Is Rugby League beyond redemption?
There was some cause for optimism over the last twelve months. Much needed commonsense reforms had made some good metres. But has it all been undone in the last few weeks?
And are the problems systemic, lurking somewhere deep in the psyche of a sick sub-culture? Are the on and off-field dramas of recent weeks symptomatic of this deeper sickness?
The potentially lethal Greg Inglis shoulder charge on Dean Young’s head, almost a year ago, brought one of the issues heading for reform to a head. Literally.
It has always been a given that the head was off-limits - in every sport on the planet except boxing. The head is not to be attacked. The head must be protected.
But administrators in League have never had the courage to keep it that way. They punish the guilty with a slap on the wrist with a duck’s feather. How could anything but continued thuggery flourish under administration like that?
The media and public outcry over the Inglis incident shamed league gatekeepers into a charade of firmness. That they were so slow to act shows just how out of touch the league culture was and is with medical advice and public opinion.
Despite the fact that every football code forever has decreed that the head is out of bounds Rugby League culture has continued to turn the blindest of eyes.
Despite the fact that other football codes have held their ground on a zero tolerance policy, Rugby League still dream of their game being a form of cross country boxing, without the gloves.
And when some action was taken after the Inglis affair, too many voices from the ranks of the players and media bemoaned that our game was getting soft.
Then came the concussion discussion that should have put the issue to bed forever. At last everybody got it. Even League. Or did they?
Rugby League’s global showcase, the State of Origin, is in full swing. The first clash was played out before a crowd of 80,000 and telecast to 91 countries with a viewing audience said to be in the many millions.
What is just about the only thing we have seen or heard about since?
Paul Gallen, the NSW captain, punching Nate Myles several times in the head when the latter wasn’t even defending himself. And Paul Gallen protesting his innocence with the argument that different rules have always applied for State of Origin.
What was just as obvious as Gallen’s punches was the glaring failure on the part of the referees to adjudicate on the game according to the rules. This game will not be remembered for NSW’s gutsy win over their arch rivals, not even for Gallen’s swinging arm aimed squarely at Myles’ head or even the raw fisted blows that were landed seconds afterwards. It will be remembered by the referees’ failure to referee the game according to the rules.
How has this situation come about? They don’t qualify to be referees until they learn the rules, are tested on their knowledge of the rules, are further tested by their application of the rules at every level of the sport for years. Endless winter Saturday and Sunday mornings at 9am, with frost crunching under their football boots and icy wind cutting through bodies, until they are hand-picked, the chosen ones.
The game’s elite on-field adjudication team.
And they fail to protect a players head?
This situation has come about because the players act like they are above the rules and the rule keepers don’t have the courage to stare them down and blow them off the park.
Take Gallen, again. He challenges the referee on every decision that goes against his team. He has back-chatted them into submission. The referees seem to be scared of him. So scared of him that he can stand in the middle of a public park, throw rights and lefts at the head of another man, in the full view of referees, match officials, and a global audience of 91 countries and many millions of people and nothing is done.
This whole saga is symptomatic of systemic failure in the code to administrate and adjudicate the game according to the rules.
Let me give you two other examples.
Why don’t we have contested scrums in Rugby League anymore? Because the players have bullied the referees and those who manage the game into submission through their systematic refusal to play according to the rules.
Why is there an infringement of some kind at every play the ball? Same reason. I once heard commentator Ray Warren once pontificate (correctly) on the play the ball rule by saying ‘the onus is on the tackler to roll away after completing the tackle.’
I have never seen a tackler roll away. I have seen the tackler lie all over the tackled player until he feels he has crossed the line of the referee’s long suffering tolerance level. Does he roll away then? No, he uses the body of the tackled player as leverage to get back to his feet causing the play-the-ball to be slowed up even more.
Gallen’s defense was that Sate of Origin is different. The rules that govern every other dimension of the sport from Under 6’s to Test matches don’t apply in Rugby League’s showcase. What planet am I on?
When Zinedine Zidane head-butted the chest of an opponent on footballs greatest stage in 2006, with the World Cup of the World Game on the line, it didn’t matter that he was one of the greatest players to ever play the game. It didn’t matter that he was on the biggest stage in the history of the biggest game on the planet. There was no dribbly excuse that ‘a World Cup Final is different’. He struck the chest of an opponent and he was red-carded and suspended for three matches. Imagine had he struck the head.
The other defense of too many of the entire fraternity of Rugby League is that this is what people come to see the game for - the big hits - the armless shoulder charge etc. No they don’t. They come for what is skillful about the sport:
• skillful ball movement through the hands and off the boot
• wingers diving for a try in the corner with millimeters and milliseconds to spare
• ball carriers sliding through gaps where there isn’t a gap to the naked eye
• Rugby League players soaring high like AFL players to score from a bomb or diffuse one
• for moments of brilliance, not brutality
From the second State Of Origin and onward we have a chance to see whether Rugby League is really listening to its heartland, whether there is any substance to the eleventh hour tough talk on punching.
We will see whether it’s safe to send our kids back onto the field.
