Storm Grappling

With the recent focus on the Storm’s grapple tackles and their various exotic defensive techniques, and all the talk of their Jiu Jitsu training techniques, are such techniques by their very nature highly liable to injure?

I gained a tiny insight into that question watching my daughter’s Jiu Jitsu class. They were being taught the “melting” defensive technique, where an opponent attacks their legs with the intent of lifting them or pushing them back. The counter is to melt on top of the opponent, letting their legs drop and extend out the back. It looks exactly like the Storm “crusher” tackle with one key difference. The instructor yells at them to sweep the legs back so as to retain control. Never “hop and drop”. The crusher tackle actually looks like the hop and drop the instructor was yelling at the kids about NOT doing. 

This leads me to, shock horror, wonder if Paul Kent is right in his complaint that the Storms grappling techniques are aiming to injure? But if so, is the issue not the Jiu Jitsu techniques themselves, but their apparent modifications?

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  • Clarification: the instructor kept showing how hop and drop ended up on the opponents neck and not on their back with their arms unable to free themselves. Point of Jiu Jitsu is submission of an opponent not fight escalation 

    • This reply was deleted.
      • Poppa, I only meant that with all the discussion about Storm grappling, I had heard they utilized Jiu Jitsu techniques. Based on watching that Jiu Jitsu lesson, the crushed tackle would be a misapplication or Jiu Jitsu techniques. The issue in crusher tackles is the defender leaning on the neck and players typically get into trouble because they get both feet off the ground and come down on the neck. The Jiu Jitsu instructor was explicitly telling the ninja kids that their feet were not to hop off the ground but instead sweep back, so the “attacker” is forced to the ground. 

        In that context, Paul Kent has a point - saying the Storm aim to injure - in his stoush with Brett Finch and Cooper Cronk, both who said the Storm only use legit Jiu Jitsu techniques. Nope, they don’t, because their crusher tackle departs from the technique taught. I vomit in my mouth to say Kent might be right but he might be right. 

  • Hi Daz, hows things?

    • Good Snake. You’ve been reasonably well behaved lately. Keep up the good work 

      • Thanks mate, I bet youve grappled a few big bags of salty jatz in your time Daz lol, fitting blog from you.

  • This reply was deleted.
    • Tad, I think everyone can benefit by watching Cam Smith defend. He is a great grappler, using the weight of his opponent against them. Self evidently Jiu Jitsu stuff.

      I just think he is also a grub who happens to be a good talker. There was an episode in the Raiders game were he was penalized for “rubbish on the face” - the knuckle in the ear - where he argued and dissented so much that I just think any other player would have conceded a further 10 for dissent. And the Storm, who have a whole PR department to make them out the victim, appear to also get their players to play the victim, given the way Smith carries on when penalized for grubby stuff. 

      Overall, Smith is a great player. Any club would take him and all fans would adopt him instantly. A winner.  But he can also be a self-important grub!

      • This reply was deleted.
        • Tad, Cam Smith has the integrity of a dunny rat and the tenacity of its cockroach in tow.

          That said, irrespective of this supposed catalogue of 'martial experience' he brings to the game, he is undoubtedledly an excellent footballer!

          I'm not one to declare him the greatest of all time - I personally think the best hooker I've ever seen (and who changed the game) was Steve Walters - but, alongside Thurston and Andrew Johns, he's the best game manager I think we've ever seen.

          You can't deny him that!

          P.S. Cam Smith isn't - and never was a hooker in the traditional sense. He's a halfback who plays out of dummy half.

          He was always a halfback but had to play '9' when he came into grade because the Storm had Matt Orford at half. 

          If Cam Smith was rated against the greatest halfbacks of all time - he wouldn't be in the conversation.

  • Excellent Daz! I was thinking of posting a similar blog.

    There's been some silliness in the media from the likes of Buzz Rothfield and Ben Ikin, suggesting that the Storm's tackling techniques are simply wrestling tactics "gone wrong".

    Now, Gus Gould commented in the lead up to the Storm v Raiders game that the Storm players were practicing 'arm bars' and head wrestling in their warm up, so, it seems unlikely that during a regime of warm-ups, the Storm players are engaging in practice where tackles "go wrong" - moreover - it suggests they're practicing techniques that they have been trained in.

    When Rothfield and Ikin suggest that 'every club does it', they are engaging in shameless false equivalence! The other clubs do practice wrestling to keep up with the inventiveness and cunning of the Storm - but I can't remember the last time any team other than the Storm was prosecuted for inventing the likes of the 'chicken wing', 'crusher', 'arm roll', or 'wingnut' tackles.

    Let's go back to another sport - cricket - where a player, in a minnow team, was engaging in illegal activity - Muttiah Muralitharan. At the time, his bowling action was illegal per the rules of the game but, the ICC, desperate to ensure a member nation was competitive, changed the rules and extended the angle of the arm from 5 degrees up to 15 degrees to allow Murali to chuck his doosra (which was independently measured at 14 degrees).

    We often see this in regulated sport.

    For example, the AFL allowed the northern state teams an addition to the salary cap (the COLA - Cost of Living Allowance) to assist the likes of the Swans, Giants, Suns and Lions to obtain and retain stars of the game from the southern states.

    Similarly, the NRL have allowed the Storm to get away with a regime of deliberate questionable tactics to maintain their competitiveness. 

    These administrative bodies do this because it is in their financial interests to do so - the NRL require a competitive team in Victoria as much as the AFL requires competitive teams in NSW and Qld because their broadcast revenues depend on it! As much as it might vex the 70 year old Fitzroy fan down in Mexico that his team no longer exists, and the CEO publicly advocates that the highest profile free agent stays at GWS, the TV revenue dictates that it is better off overall if the GWS are successful - likewise the Melbourne Storm are succesful in the NRL.

    Now, the question then becomes, "is this what we want for the game" and if it isn't, then the next question is "how do we keep Storm successful if we take away the wrestling tactics?"

    This is the sensible epicentre of the debate and it's an epicentre that the media have conveniently orbited around.

    The likes of Buzz's and Ikin's livelihood depends on discussing the topic whilst maintaining a safe distance from the epicentre and, to the scrupulous and observant fan, it is sarcastic and derisive.

    We all felt it when Brett White ripped Nathan Cayless's pectoral muscle apart in the prelim back in 2007! We all see it when Nelson Asofa-Solomona drops his 115kg girth on the neck of Dean Britt or when the grub Cam Smith tries to rip off Bailey Simonssen's ear!

    And when they don't get charged for it - but a neville from the Tigers cops a week for running into a bloke in the act of passing - questions are asked by the fans!

    If Buzz and Ikin think they're being clever when they "try to define" the discussion instead of acknowledging the obvious conclusion - they're engaging in the logical falacy of slothful induction and it's infuriating to even the most passive observer of the game of rugby league!

    Hats off to Paul Kent!

    He and James Hooper are the only members of the Murdoch Mafia who are actually calling out the Storm for the grubs that they are - and they are doing it for the betterment of the game they treasure!

    Let's hope the 'Mafia' don't do a hit job on them!

    • Yes totally agree. Watching Ben Ikin try to deny the logical conclusion as to what the Storm have done to the game over the last couple of decades is extremely painful viewing.l

    • Bourbon Man, that was excellent, a great read and spot on. I watched Ikin and Buzz try and muddy the conversation, Paul Kent was excellent in the presentation and content of his (correct) opinion.  

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