Opinion
Why rugby league can be the greatest and dumbest game of all
Andrew Webster
Chief Sports WriterRugby league reckons it’s the greatest game of all, but sometimes it can be the dumbest.
Certainly, it can be the most forgetful – and, no, that’s not an intended pun because this matter is far too serious.
Just over a week ago, Immortal Wally Lewis revealed in a very raw and honest interview with 60 Minutes that he had been diagnosed with probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The brain scans were so confronting, he said, it made his doctor tear up.
Like others who are facing this dire consequence of playing a violent game, “The King” was quick to not blame the game.
“I didn’t go in there to pick up the concussions,” he said. “Nor did I think about evading them. I was playing footy for the love of the sport. It really has been my life. And again, I’m not seeking sympathy. It’s just something that I don’t think the game should be blamed [for]. If there were any mistakes made, it was perhaps the way that I positioned my head – and that was incorrectly when trying to affect a tackle.”
The general reaction from rugby league fans was one of genuine empathy, from both sides of the Tweed, while also issuing a plea to the NRL to protect players from brain injuries. To protect players from themselves, essentially.
One of many big hits during Wally Lewis’ career.Credit: Archive
Four days after Lewis’ bold revelations, talkback radio and social media were flooded with fans branding the game “soft” after Roosters forward Nathan Brown was sent off for a high tackle on Manly’s Ben Trbojevic.
“What about the consistency?!” cried the fans. “The game’s gone soft! It was a good tackle! Sin-bin at worst!”
What about the consistency? What about the damage to Trbojevic’s brain? What about protecting his head? What about what Wally Lewis said four days earlier?
Here’s a question: how was Brown’s tackle not a send-off – or, at the very least, a sin-bin?
He raced up out of the line, left the ground, dropped his left shoulder into the tackle and caught Trbojevic around the throat, jolting his head backwards.
As debate raged about the send-off, the NRL Match Review Committee looked at all available angles, all mitigating circumstances, and banned Brown for one match with an early guilty plea.
One match. Presumably, the match review also feels the game’s going soft if it’s handing out punishments like that.
The following night, Titans forward Moe Fotuaika’s shoulder thuds into the head of Warriors fullback Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad and he, too, is sent from the field. The next morning, the charge sheet drops and he also cops one match with an early guilty plea.
Meanwhile, Penrith five-eighth Jarome Luai leaves the ground and crunches Storm prop Nelson Asofa-Solomona squarely in the face with the point of his shoulder as the third man into a tackle … and is whacked with rugby league’s version of a lettuce leaf – a fine.
NRL head of football Graham Annesley insists there was no directive to referees to crackdown on head high tackles and, to be honest, this weekend has thrown up so many inconsistencies around sin-bins, send-offs and match review charges it’s fair to say fans were left scratching their heads.
Nathan Brown is sent from the field for his hit on Ben Trbojevic.Credit: NRL Photos
Three years ago, the NRL drew a line in the sand when clubs were advised just hours before the first match of Magic Round that zero contact to the head would be acceptable. Now, it’s just a big, long, blurry line.
Remember the short-term pain ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys’ told us about? How players were going to have to lower their point of contact otherwise they would be suspended out of the game? How that particular crackdown would change the game forever?
Like almost every crackdown that has ever come out of the NRL, it quickly fizzled into the ether and turned into a vague directive that appears to apply more clearly in some matches but not in others.
The crackdown concerning the two send-offs witnessed at the weekend actually happened in 2012 when it banned the shoulder charge.
At the time, there was outrage and mass confusion about what it would mean, although Storm coach Craig Bellamy put it in simpler terms when I discussed it with him. “Just penalise and suspend players if they make contact with the head,” he said. “Like it’s always been.”
Concussion is the greatest issue for contact sports with the dark cloud of code-ending litigation hanging over their heads.
And while the NRL makes the right noises about the issue, and concussion protocols have never been more rigorous, sometimes the way the Match Review Committee addresses head high tackles fails to live up to the rhetoric of the suits at the top.
Yes, rugby league is a brutal sport played at ever-increasing speed by players of ever-improving strength and agility. The margin for error is narrowing each season.
It’s also true that concussions occur just as much on the other side of the ball because defenders are no longer taught to put their head in the right place.
But the NRL cannot say it’s absolutely committed to eliminating high contact when it’s slapping players with one-match suspensions or inconsequential fines.
Neither can supporters when they lament the game has softened because referees are sending off players who have jolted their shoulders into a ball-carrier’s head.
If the game continues on this trajectory, we won’t have to worry about crackdowns and debates about how rugby league no longer resembles the good old days when Wally Lewis was putting his head in the wrong place.
Because there will be no game.
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