Shoulder charges will help lawyers bleed league dry

The Sydney Morning Herald’s back page sports report of the second round of the NRL premiership resembled a wrap-up of a demolition derby rather than a story on rugby league.

* Ben Ross was going to be referred straight to the NRL judiciary for a forearm charge that flattened Cooper Cronk.

* Brett White, who was sent off with Ross in the melee following the incident, was up on grade-four striking charge.

* Karmichael Hunt was facing the judiciary on a shoulder charge that broke Braith Anasta’s nose.

* Josh Perry was charged with a grade-one striking charge following an alleged head-butt to Danny Wicks.

* Ashley Graham was charged with a grade-four careless high tackle after a shoulder charge went wrong and left Brett Hodgson concussed.

The context for these incidents is the prowler-tackle in the first round by Riley Brown that smashed the glamour player Craig Wing out of rugby league for months.

Is rugby league morphing from a ferocious and often exciting body contact sport into a body destruction sport?

In the 1890s rugby union was so brutal The Bulletin called the code ‘the undertaker’s’ friend.’ Is rugby league becoming the 21st century ‘undertaker’s friend?’

When I’m confused about what is happening in the rugby league world, I look to Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph for some guidance on what to think about a particular issue or controversy. The articles in The Sunday Telegraph tend to provide a series of readings that throw light, a bit like glosses on a Biblical text, on a contentious matter.

So here are some insights from the Sunday Telegraph in its NRL second round wrap-up:

* Andrew Johns in his article headed ‘Crunch time for the prowler’ argued that too much air play had been given to Riley Brown’s tackle on Craig Wing. ‘Critics should lay off Riley,’ the Master concluded.

* James Hooper had a sympathetic piece on Riley Brown that revealed his father was sentenced to 17 years in jail for murdering his mother. Brown was left as the figurehead of the family and made their legal guardian at age 18. ‘To this day, Riley Brown and his No 1 is nothing compared to the hell Riley Brown and his brothers have endured … and overcome.’

* The league legend, Ricky Stuart, described in the logo to his column as The Game’s Best Thinker, and writing ‘not as a rugby league coach, but as a parent,’ argued that players faced risks no matter what sport they played. Rugby league was safe for kids. It is character-building. In a reference to the Craig Wing incident, Stuart insisted: ‘But what I can’t understand is the knee jerk reactions and negative headlines.’ The article was highlighted by a delightful photograph of Stuart holding his two smiling sons, Jackson and Jed.

* Underneath Ricky Stuart’s column was The Comment by Phil Rothfield. Some background here. Rothfield is a fierce defender of the rugby league code, as some of us who have been savaged in sports pages he controls can testify.

The Comment documented the difficulty that rugby league development officers had in answering the complaints of mothers following the Craig Wing incident. A leading league doctor was quoted as saying that the prowler-tackle left players exposed to ruptured kidneys or serious spinal injuries.

An AFL official was quoted as saying that brutal league incidents were ‘the best possible free kicks for our game in Sydney.’

Phil Rothfield ended his column by noting that he’d received around 100 emails from fans turned off by the prowler-tackle on Craig Wing, and that the wife of an advertising executive ‘at the big end of town’ refused to go to watch the West Tigers with her husband and kids ‘because she was so sickened by the incident.’

This is powerful stuff coming from a journalist who is league through and through. And it leads me to the conclusion that the NRL really has no option but to ban the prowler-tackle and the shoulder charge.

1. Rugby league, according to Sonny Bill Williams, perhaps the most effective deliverer of the shoulder-charge, ‘is not ‘netball.’ It’s not a demolition derby either. Mothers are not going to allow their sons to play rugby league if they are going to end up being forced to look like Hannibal Lecter, or worse are crippled by cheap shots.

2. Skilful playmakers will be smashed out of the game, or will stop trying to be playmakers. This thought struck me while I was watching West Tigers and Brett Hodgson was smashed by the Cowboys centre Ashley Graham. Hodgson came into the line, right by the ruck, rather like a matador engaging the bull close up, when he saw Graham charging at him with his forearm extended. Hodgson, it seemed to me, tried to pull back from the impact and slipped. The forearm smashed into his jaw, rather than his chest, where it was probably intended.

The point is that if playmakers have to run the gauntlet continually of being smashed by shoulder charges that can afflict a serious injury on them, they’re going to stop trying to be skillful, matador-type players.

This is the point of the shoulder charge, of course. But is this a good thing for rugby league? I doubt it.

Incidentally, Hodgson had to be given three days off training to recover from concussion (is this enough time off?), and slept in the room of the team doctor after the match so he could be monitored.

3. The NRL is setting itself up for a lawyer’s bonanza with its defence of shoulder tackles, despite all the evidence of the damage they wreck and might do if things go really wrong.

The tackle might be ‘legal’ in rugby league but this will not make it legal as far as the law is concerned. I passed my torts exam decades ago with a mark of 52, but I am a fan of Boston Legal and my understanding is that the shoulder charge that goes wrong could be grounds for an assault charge.

One of the elements of torts is the issue of ‘foreseeability.’

Is it foreseeable that the nature of a shoulder charge is such that a player could be badly damaged? The answer is obviously, yes.

Is it in the nature of a shoulder charge that physical damage is the main element in this form of tackle? The answer again is, yes.

We have grounds here, I believe, for a legal action by a damaged player against someone who has launched a shoulder charge against him.

Before the ‘we’re not playing netball’ fanatics start bellowing about the integrity of the game being destroyed with this sort of analysis, they should read another text from the Round 2 wrap-up in The Sunday Telegraph.

The must-read gossip pages — What’s The Buzz, written by Phil Rothfield and Phillip Heads — carried an item saying that Craig Wing has been inundated with offers of free legal advice to take a civil action against Riley Brown. The item mentioned that the late Steve Rogers had successfully sued Mark Budgen for breaking his jaw, but that Wing didn’t want to take the matter further.

Sooner or later, probably sooner, a player is going to act on the Rogers precedent and take civil action, looking for huge damages from the deepest pocket available (the NRL) for injuries sustained from a shoulder charge gone wrong.

And sooner or later, probably sooner, a pack of lawyers will start rounding up former players who might be suffering the continuing effects of shoulder charges and launch a class action against the NRL.

Memo to the NRL: Ban the shoulder charge now before the lawyers get their chance to bleed the rugby league code dry.

Free Email updates:

• Get Spiro Zavos's articles emailed to you
• Get a daily Rugby League email

Our daily emails are only sent if there is content for the sport or that author. You can subscribe to multiple daily emails; or get the daily Roar email with all our content in it. We value privacy. More...