I have been watching a new thing on my Telstra TBox called NRL Daily with Gibsy and Freddy Fittler, I was watching it tonight and Freddy gets pretty fired up on one topic in particular and even goes as far as to single out the Rabbits (mainly because of this years trials) and Storm. The thing that got him so fired up was the cannon ball tackle (people might remember Isaac Luke taking down Shillington in the 4 Nations) he was mainly talking about the Rabbitohs in the Charity shield game vs Dragons there were a few times where they used the technique. He says that the Storm are the biggest culprits of this sort of thing with the grapple tackles and cannonball tackles and they have been doing it for years (not that nobody knew that anyway). anyway the thing that worried me is that he also made the good point that if this sort of rubbish isnt banned from our great game that we will be seeing little kids in the park practicing going in on the opponents knees etc, it is dangerous and needs to be taken right out of the game, and Storm in particular need to be put on notice that the shit needs to stop now. sorry about my little rant but seeing Freddy get a bit fired up about it really got me fuming when I thought about wanting to put my 2 boys into Rugby League but if that sort of shit is happening when it comes time for them to get into some sort of sport they will be kept away from League, and I think that The NRL needs to act now because I'm sure that I'm not the only parent who would have these concerns and it will slowly kill our sport, sorry about the rant but I needed to get it off my chest.
One more thing, I know that there are alot of non believers of Kearney on here, but I for one am glad that the Eels haven't adopted the bullshit that he saw for years at the storm, but expect The Rabbits to be criticized a fair bit from now on for the same thing now that Maguire is there
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I'm not so sure that cannonball tackles are allowed anymore... I was under the impression that it was banned half way through last season?
I watched the video on NRL.com and couldnt agree more with Freddy. The 3rd man in is ok to me as long as they tackle in the hip area or above but I think the owness is on the Ref calling held earlier.
It's not within the rules of the game. These techniques are dangerous and players get suspended for employing them... the fact is though teams like Melbourne and Souths are always pushing the envelope to see what they can get away with.
Maybe they should ban 3 man tackles altogether, more tackle breaks and offloads = more exciting football?
Fui would score a 100 tries