Why the NRL can’t stuff up yet another crackdown

You hear it every week or so: a concerned former player talking about another former player suffering from memory loss, headaches, irritability, sadness.

The reason? Concussion.

I’ve seen and heard it myself. The former player who can’t remember his birthday. The former player who gets emotional while retelling an old war story. The former player who you take to lunch and he tells you the same thing – three times.

There’s a growing deck of Scanlen’s footy cards featuring childhood heroes who are no longer the gladiators they used to be. These are players in their 50s and early 60s, too young to be showing the early signs of dementia.

For that reason alone, the NRL’s recent crackdown on high shots should be an easy sell. Let’s protect our modern-day heroes from a life of misery and ill health, they say? How could we not?

Instead, it’s become what it always becomes — a shitfight with people yelling at each other to prove they are right.

Of all the crackdowns and edicts and reinforcement of old rules that have come and gone over the years, this was the one the NRL had to get right.

The game has changed. Even the slightest stumble from a player elicits a common thought from those watching: “Ooh! Concussion?!”

So it’s not like concussion has just arrived at the party. The NRL had time to bring this in the right way.

It had to let the clubs and players know at the start of the pre-season that it would be sending players from the field, or at least sin-binning them and putting them on report, for any high contact.

It had to give coaches time to change tackling techniques, drilling it into them all summer, just as they do with wrestling, so it becomes second nature by round one.

“Of all the crackdowns and edicts and reinforcement of old rules that have come and gone over the years, this was the one the NRL had to get right.”

It had to bring the coaches, players, officials, referees, those crazy hepcats in the Bunker, those dribblers in the media, and the fans, of course, into the one tent and let them know this is how life will be from now on.

But that’s not how rugby league rolls. It stumbles around in the dark, looking for its house keys.

The ARL commissioners talk about concussion at every meeting, wringing their hands about whether they’re going to be held liable if someone sues down the track.

At their last meeting on April 30, they decided the Match Review Committee and judiciary weren’t doing an adequate job – I know, who’d have thought? – in stamping out high tackles.

The directive came down from the commission to management that it wants to introduce a significant rule interpretation. The only problem is someone forgot to properly explain it to the referees.

The match officials didn’t go hard enough for the commission’s liking in round nine, letting Eels players Dylan Brown and Marata Niukore stay on the field after terrible incidents in the one play against the Roosters, the refs were told to go even harder at Magic Round, the NRL reminded the chief execs on their conference call on Friday what was coming, some club bosses passed on the edict to the coaches, some told their players, and then — Bang! Bang! —Magic Round isn’t so magic.

It is possible to consider and agree with both sides of this debate, which I do.

The send-offs of Josh Papalii, Herman Ese’ese and Tyrell Fuimaono are justifiable in any era, pre- or post-crackdown. The sin-binning and reporting for incidental contact, from smaller players running into taller ones at speed, which happens every game, only bring confusion and frustration.

Josh Papalii was sent off for this tackle on Tuipulotu Katoa.Credit:Fox Sports

The big picture is important. Player welfare is important. Participation is important.

But next weekend’s picture is important, too. While the game has decided to place one eye on the future, it also needs to remember its present.

Appealing to “new markets” is all well and good but the game is disenfranchising many rusted-on fans who don’t like what they’re seeing every week.

The NRL seems offended by suggestions the game is too quick, although it is, no matter how much data it wants to ram down our throats.

Tackle set restarts are all well and good but “defence” isn’t a dirty word. Neither is “penalty”. The game struck a nice balance last year between attack and defence but tackle restarts for offside have further cranked up the speed.

It’s widened the gap between the better sides with established spines and combinations. It’s made bad football teams worse.

The claim that the wrestle has been eliminated is a nonsense.

Two defenders still come in high, wrapping up the ball to prevent the offload, waiting for the third player to come in low, wrapping his arms around the ball-carrier’s legs, slowly bringing him down so the defensive line gets enough time to get onside.

This merry little dance is rehearsed all pre-season. It’s been coached to a generation of players who never had to launch themselves one-on-one at a tackling bag, let alone the big inflatable tube of a tractor tyre as Jack Gibson did to his Eels players in the 1980s.

The NRL says players just need to tackle lower but technique can’t be changed with the flick of a switch.

The person I feel most sorry for is the referee, who is now officiating on his own after the two-referee model was abandoned, in charge of a far quicker game, with so much going on, and is now responsible for enforcing a crackdown that should have been handled far better than it has.

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