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Kickers must be made to feel the pressure

Roar Guru
29th July, 2010
3

Titans celebrateAt the start of the year I made a resolution not to blast referees this season. My resolution was made partly through a feeling that it was a tough job and having some no name blogger tapping away in fury did little to reach a productive solution of improved refereeing and two.

If the improvements that needed to be made weren’t obvious enough to those in charge, they would hardly listen to me if I pointed them out.

But we are getting very close to the business end of proceedings and I feel it would be remiss of me not to air a serious concern I have with a particular ruling which is growing in prominence.

Twice last week, first on Friday and then on Monday a team landed a penalty goal after an innocuous challenge on a kicker was deemed worthy of a plenty. It may have happened more by the two examples stuck in my mind.

On both occasions the team that received the penalties just slotted an easy two points.

The Eels penalty pretty much killed off the Bulldogs comeback (I’m not saying it decided the match) and it left me very concerned that such a decision could have a major role in decided who gets in the top eight or the result of a finals match.

Now the rule is that you have to be in the motion of tackling a kicker you can’t just shoulder charge him. That may be fair enough but the two players where hardly hammering a bloke late with a shoulder.

The Bulldogs Ben Hannant appeared to at worst “chest” his opponent and the Bronco’s Corey Parker used his hands and pushed Braith Anasta. (Those watching the footage may have picked up a theatrical squeal from Anasta, but we’ll leave that debate for another day).

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Of course it’s ridiculous to say you have to be in the action of tackling in the kicker because if you flew in and tried to before a trademark tackle around the boot laces that would probably be the most dangerous on any of the scenarios.

In my opinion we’ve let the pendulum swing too far in favour of the attacking team, we can’t expect teams to just let blokes ping the ball down field with no pressure. Especially seeing the policing of the rule, like the monitoring of the forward pass from dummy half, seems to have exploded in the last few weeks.

The idea was to stop late and dangerous hits, not any form of contact. We got the balance right when you can tackle a bloke in the air on kicks, so let’s focus on the earlier stage in the production process.

These are soft, soft penalties and it would be a travesty if such a call determined a major result or heaven forbid the destination of the Premiership.

It’s clear the referees receive guidance on which rules need to be fixed during the season so let’s get this one sorted before the action heats up.

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