1. A ball passed sideways or backwards is legal
2, Balls floating forward or passed forward are illegal
3. Stick to the rules and players and skill coaches will work on methods to make sure that regardless of whatever position or circumstance a player is met with, the players will develop the right skills through intense training to not make an illegal pass.
4. Use the million dollar bunker to check on any questionable/dubious pass throughout the game. Doesn't matter what the play is afterwards, if the bunker finds an illegal pass, notify the on field refs and apply the rulings and get on with the game.
Stick to these simple rules and get rid of EVERYTHING that is grey and murky out of the game.
5. While the play continues, use the bunker when loose balls appear in two, three, four man tackles and if there is a culprit found stripping the ball then stop the game, give the culprit a yellow card and if he is caught a second time in the game he is sent off for the rest of the game and fined a minimum of $20k and carry over points are accumulated season after season and when they hit 40 points or even 3o points (10 points per infringement) the player is booted out of the game for at least 3 games.
6. If more than one defender touches an attacking player with the ball during a tackle, then no player is allowed the attempt of stripping the ball. Only a real one on one is allowed the right to strip the ball and the moment an attacker is on the ground, knees or butt or back stomach, shoulders elbows, the strip attempt is immediately over and the attacker gets up to play the ball. You can only strip the ball while an attacker carrying the ball is standing.
Sure, the issue of recalling players to deal with an event that occurred in a previous play or two will happen, but to my way of thinking, this is far, far, far, far, better than the awful stench of players, clubs, fans, officials, media, etc, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions will be caught up in controversies dealing with shit refereeing & non use of bunker decisions that denied a team the chance to win a game fairly and squarely.
7. The bunker should be used to recall all knock ons and illegal plays/actions too and the culprits should be punished.
Get rid of the grey areas in our game, put on the extra time lost in recalling players to an event that occurred in a previous play or two, and this will also cut down on, though not completely, all the big money gambling interests that can use its power to sway a game in their favour.
If we want to stamp out the bullshit even more, then players get carry over penalty points too for passing a ball forward and bar accidents/circumstances, players and clubs should be punished for breaking the rules of the game - look at forward passes as an attempt to cheat/deceive and potentially making a mockery of our game.
How else are we to get rid of these awful grey areas in our game, all of them completely open to misuse in a vast variety of ways.
Support the traditional good will spirit of the game and accept nothing less no matter what.
Replies
Just stick to the rules and enforce them and there won't be any issues.
The rules are being severely bent by the grey... fuck all the grey off. SIMPLE. Keep everything clear black or white and nothing grey in-between.
That is the problem that the NRL has tried to do, make everything black & white in the game, and it’s just not. The vast majority of decisions are subjective, you will never have a rule book that covers every single possible scenario.
The point of the rules is to provide the referees with a framework on which they base their decisions. The rules aren’t there for their own sake. They should only be enforced where doing so improves the spectacle for the fans, not merely because the rule is there.
We will adapt in using the bunker and recalling plays using extra eyes that were illegal Brett. We set examples and discipline our kids so they are very clear on what is right or wrong with behaviour/attitude issues and this stops the chaos of grey coming in. But when we allow the chaos of grey to creep in then everything goes backassward and we are the only ones to blame because we were not strong enough to say no or yes when it should have happened in times past.
I just don't see what is the problem with having a strong will framework in place for our game to severely cut down on this awful grey areas screwing up our game. No one likes cheats, generally speaking, and very few like being duded unfairly when they have clear evidence to the contrary before them.
In the end, the winner is the one who played fairly - no winner on the field should come off the field as a loser. This is awful and must be gotten rid of, corruption, stupidity and all.
It leaves everything open for corruption/manipulation to occur "We have to take away the opportunities for refs to decide a game which they have been for some years."
Our game is seriously rigged.
But that's the point, you can't remove the temptation of corruption, unless you remove human beings completely from the equation, including players.
Should we do that as well ?
In games rules are rules and players, coaches, etc, train to play the game within the rules as best as they possibly can. It just requires the will power to make it so, and for the NRL to uphold the rules at all times. There is nothing to hard about this Brett.
You're missing the point. The rules by their very nature are guidelines. They are there to provide the referees with the framework to base their decisions on, not to be enforced in a black and white manner.
I had this argument with another poster the other day.
I'll refer you to the ridiculous No Try ruling in the Manly game that robbed Manly of a perfectly fair try. It was ruled to be an obstruction because the Manly ballplayer received the ball 6 inches inside the lead runners inside shoulder, but he was 10m behind the lead runner. Now the rule says that if the player receives the ball inside the lead runners inside shoulder and then runs behind the player it is an obstruction, but on this occasion no Eels defender was obstructed due to the Manly ballplayers depth. In fact, the defender who was supposedly impeded, Manu M'au in this case, went on to miss a straight forward one on one tackle that led to what should have been a fair try.
A classic case of the rule being applied in an absolute fashion, not in the manner in which it was meant to be applied. Anybody with a half decent knowledge of the game could tell it was a fair try, but it was stupidly overturned by the bunker.
That is a classic case of why the rules can't be enforced in a black and white manner.
Brett, you consistently raise lots of good points but it doesn't solve this overall issue, well at least reduce these controversies to a minimum.
The game is so much faster now, collisions consistently more powerful, etc, and after reading through so many good insightful and detailed posts in this thread, I really think we ain't going to stop all the controversies from happening throughout the season until we get a grid type technology in place to adjudicate over acceptable or not passes floating forward from the hands.
Until then, we are relying on the officials to get things right as much as possible, supported by the NRL's inclusion of the bunker and its replays notifying our refs on their verdicts as fast as possible.
They are going to have to let the bunker adjudicate on passes the refs are not 100% sure if they are acceptable forward passes or not which means more delays during the game.
Better that (the devil you know) than the way things are right now.
I just don't like grey areas being left there to potentially be abused by the powers that be down-the-line to control outcomes they planned for / that suit their agendas.
Yes that is the case, because the vast majority of decisions required of referees are subjective by their very nature.
As for your example, head clashes aren't the only way players can be concussed. A player's head can be competely untouched but he can still be concussed. Concussion is the result of the brain rattling around inside the skull, and that can easily happen with the G forces that players incur during any number of collisions during the course of a typical game.
Should we also outlaw heavy tackling ?
Perhaps we should ban tackling of any kind and turn the game into Touch.
That's no good, because you can be knocked out playing Touch. I know, because I have been.
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