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As someone who once believed that the advent of Super League in the mid-90s would benefit the game in the long term, I remember the moment in 1997 when, on a dreary Monday night, I said to myself, “This experiment has gone too far.”
Canterbury were playing the newly-formed and ultimately short-lived Hunter Mariners at Belmore in front of an official crowd of 7,126 (if that was the real number I’ll put my vintage Tony Iro Mariners jersey up for sale on Ebay).
Although one of the tenets of the rebel competition was a emphasis on attack, it occurred to me during that evening’s opening exchanges that the play-the-balls seemed particularly fast, almost to the point of the game resembling a more physical version of touch.
Players would charge forward, dive at the ground and get up immediately as hurried defenders, having been penalised to within an inch of their lives through the first nine rounds of the season, rushed to get off the player, as if enthusiastic to help the attacking side reach their tryline as rapidly as possible. The pace was literally breathtaking.
It was not surprising, therefore, to witness a full-time score of 48-36, a pathetic spectacle. Rugby league’s evolution had spiraled out of control; the dam had burst, resulting in a game of dummy-half runs and tries being scored every time a team crossed the opposition’s 20.
Thankfully, since reformation, the powers that be have understood that the 10-metre space between attack and defence, introduced unofficially in the early 90s, only functions when combined with a controlled and technically precise play-the-ball.
The tacit understanding is that defenders need to be able to keep the tackled player down to a certain extent, allowing the defensive line to reform. This allows a tensional balance between attack and defence unique to our game, giving us more attacking results than football but less than the monotonous flood of points produced in basketball and AFL.
Although that balance has been retained judging by the first four rounds this year, I have still found myself dismayed by the sluggish pace of play-the-balls across the NRL. Unfortunately, the cure to this ill isn’t simply for referees to blow more penalties.
We are facing a new problem, a strategy employed by coaches that is almost impossible to police. As has been noted by many of the game’s commentators, defenders are now drilled to hold players up; at the very moment the referee calls ‘held’, they dump him on the ground.
Referees are left without a clear path on which to proceed, now having to bide their time helplessly as players take the inevitable time to roll off and away. This happens on almost every play, and it’s become apparent to this writer that a disease from the 80s thought to be eradicated has returned: that of the lumbering, slow play-the-ball.
Many have advocated for the outlawing of ‘wrestling’ in the game. How anyone could possibly judge what may be wrestling as opposed to simply a physical struggle is beyond me.
What can be addressed, however, is the root cause of a slow play-the-ball: the gang tackle.
In the past, the NRL introduced the words ‘dominant’ and ‘surrender’ to assist referees in rewarding quality defence and allowing defenders to linger on the tackled player a little longer.
Instead, we should be rewarding solitary tackles, thereby providing incentives for coaches to encourage one-on-one defence.
How could this be done? The answer integrates both of the primary elements of the defensive structure in rugby league: the play-the-ball and the 10-metre corridor.
It would be called the Solo tackle. If a player effects a tackle on the ball carrier without assistance from teammates, the referee would call ‘solo’. At that point, he would simultaneously walk the defensive line forward five metres (that distance would be approximate, no different to the 10) while allowing a slower play-the-ball.
This would achieve two ends: raising the value of a solo tackle while also re-introducing the reality of the ‘advantage line’. On plays following a Solo, the defensive team would have the chance to push the opposition backward, a spectacle with the potential to arouse the crowd and lift the defending team, not often seen in the modern game.
The inverse of this is that the attacking team could also benefit – as any League enthusiast knows, the advantage of the gang tackle is the enclosing of the ball, disallowing further attacking motion on that play. Solo tackles do give the carrier a chance to offload or beat his man one-on-one, thereby further expanding the game.
While this would in no way eliminate the gang tackle – it is far too valuable a defensive tool to ever be dispensed with – it would add an exciting element that is currently missing from our game and be a first step in reducing cumbersome piling on of bodies in the tackle.
If referees were able to penalise slow play-the-balls in gang tackles with greater severity, while conversely giving solo tacklers more time to linger, we may be successful in drastically improving one of the few problem areas remaining in our game.
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