Sam Kasiano cleared as sanity prevails
Columnist By Luke Doherty, 19 Jul 2012 Luke Doherty is a Roar Expert
- Tagged:
- fui fui moi moi, NRL, Rugby League, Sam Kasiano
Sam Kasiano off loads the ball. AAP Image/Action Photographics, Renee McKay
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Do you honestly think Sam Kasiano deserved a one-week ban? Forget the fact Fui Fui Moi Moi was left dazed and confused, forget that Parramatta had to play 79 minutes and 50 seconds of the match one man down and forget the fact Kasiano hit his opponent in the head.
Why?
Because it’s all irrelevant.
Where’s the problem? Kasiano not even in Origin III frame
The NRL match review committee felt the Bulldogs prop deserved to miss Friday night’s blockbuster clash with Manly at Brookvale Oval.
For what? Tackling a man who fell to the height of his hip.
Yes, it’s terrible that Moi Moi was left sick and sorry, but Kasiano was hardly at fault.
What was he meant to do? How was he meant to complete a textbook tackle on a man falling at speed?
The defence argued that Moi Moi fell 50 centimetres in 0.4 of a second. Just take a minute to digest that.
50 centimetres in 0.4 of a second!
How is any rugby league player, let alone a giant forward meant to adjust his feet, body and arms to cope with those numbers?
You can’t. It’s impossible. Superman would struggle.
Rugby league seems to have fallen into the trap of thinking that any contact to the head, no matter what the circumstance, deserves a suspension.
The match review committee has taken a stronger stance on shoulder charges that slip high in 2012.
One match bans have been offered numerous times for offences that last year would’ve been considered a good tackle.
There’s no problem with that because in those instances both the tackler and the ball runner have been relatively upright.
The tackler has taken the gamble of hitting with the shoulder and must live with the consequence if it goes wrong.
Given the recent and startling evidence of the long term impact of concussion on sportspeople it’s only right that the NRL would take greater care of its players.
But to expect Kasiano to be able to show a duty of care to Moi Moi in this instance is stretching the limits of reality.
It’s extremely unfortunate that Moi Moi slipped at the last minute. It’s even more unfortunate that he was left rattled.
But to suspend Kasiano for a week would’ve sent rugby league down a dark path.
Thankfully, the NRL judiciary applied the common sense test.
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- Explore:
- fui fui moi moi, NRL, Rugby League, Sam Kasiano
July 19th 2012 @ 8:17am
sledgeross said | July 19th 2012 @ 8:17am | Report comment
Sorry Luke, disagree entirely for the sake of consistency. It was alot worse than many other “high” shots this year.
July 19th 2012 @ 9:11am
Dogs Of War said | July 19th 2012 @ 9:11am | Report comment
Your probably the one that gave it a grade 2 rating. Common sense prevailed in this instance, their is accidental contact, and then their is this. Players have a duty of care to do their upmost to avoid contact with the head, swinging arms at shoulder height are just asking to slip up and take off their head, and should be punished accordingly, but when Kasino comes in with what would have been a good hit into the stomach region, no way could he be prepared for what happened and react accordingly.
July 19th 2012 @ 8:23am
mike from tari said | July 19th 2012 @ 8:23am | Report comment
Going on what you are saying, then Kasiano was swinging his arm to hit Moi Moi in the balls but as he slipped he was hit in the head.
July 19th 2012 @ 11:23am
The Barry said | July 19th 2012 @ 11:23am | Report comment
If you’re joking – nice one !
If you’re serious then that’s one of the dumbest comments I’ve ever read.
July 19th 2012 @ 8:58am
steve b said | July 19th 2012 @ 8:58am | Report comment
I disagree Luke the arm was swinging ..it was careless for mine ,,but he is off ,,no consistency here ….
July 19th 2012 @ 10:00am
Mattwa said | July 19th 2012 @ 10:00am | Report comment
Arms swing. That’s how they get from one place to another.
July 19th 2012 @ 4:38pm
steve b said | July 19th 2012 @ 4:38pm | Report comment
Brilliant Content !
July 19th 2012 @ 9:24am
soapit said | July 19th 2012 @ 9:24am | Report comment
agree this would have been extremely unusual for this to get a week as its usually a case of all bets are off when a player falls into the tackle. however…..
moi moi slipped well before the impact. if kasiano had made more effort he could have avoided hitting the head. but the way things are theres no requirement for him to do so. so then its just a question of how far we are willing to go to protect players and how much onus is placed on the tackler to avoid high contact (i for one would like to see intent taken out of the equation).
would likely be a fairly problematic grey area with falling players (was the tackler able to react in time to change his aim?). not sure they should tinker withit
July 19th 2012 @ 9:30am
Dogs Of War said | July 19th 2012 @ 9:30am | Report comment
Slipped well before the tackle? It was shown Kasino had 0.4 sec’s to react to the situation. Give yourself an uppercut.
July 19th 2012 @ 10:10am
soapit said | July 19th 2012 @ 10:10am | Report comment
so you completely missed my point. thats ok. you kind of proved what i was saying inadvertently.
btw average human reaction time is 0.15-0.30 seconds. baseballers hit the ball with 0.2 sec reaction time.
July 19th 2012 @ 10:20am
Dogs Of War said | July 19th 2012 @ 10:20am | Report comment
Yet they stil strike out.
You say he should have got off, then you contradict yourself and say that in that 0.4 sec Kasino should have taken away all the momentum he had built up running the 35 metres off the kickoff to avoid damaging Moi Moi.
“moi moi slipped well before the impact. if kasiano had made more effort he could have avoided hitting the head.”
So my comment was directed at that bit of rubbish.
July 19th 2012 @ 11:00am
soapit said | July 19th 2012 @ 11:00am | Report comment
baseballers do strike out but they more regularly make contact with a target much smaller than a persons entire body from the neck down.
it is my opinion that it could probably been avoided if he had it in his mind that it was crucial to do so but it is not able to be proved either way (particularly with that time of 0.4s) so i see little point in arguing about that. it seems to be something that has got your back up though so i will retract the comment and agree with you that it couldnt be avoided with 0.4s of reaction time. however id be interested in your thoughts as to an alternative number on how long would be required to be able to adjust your aim with your arm (beyond it definitely being over 0.4s). bear in mind cricketers have a similar amount of time (say at minmum 0.45s @ 160km/hr) to hit the ball with the ball moving a lot more than 0.5m (and somehow they’re not supermen)
finally, he should have got off according to how the rules have always been in the game. a player slips into the tackle you dont get the blame for a high tackle, whether or not the tackler had time to avoid it. no contradiction there.
July 19th 2012 @ 11:10am
Dogs Of War said | July 19th 2012 @ 11:10am | Report comment
Each circumstance is different. Kasino didn’t have his arm up at shoulder height, and when watching film you generally can see what opportunity a player had to react to a situation, did the player have an opportunity to pull out/up or change direction? Their can’t be a blanket timeframe cause you can’t forsee what circumstance may present itself.
July 19th 2012 @ 11:15am
soapit said | July 19th 2012 @ 11:15am | Report comment
so….basically what i said in my first post which you got angry about by citing …..an exact timeframe.
July 19th 2012 @ 11:32am
Dogs Of War said | July 19th 2012 @ 11:32am | Report comment
Do I really need to remind you of your comment?
“moi moi slipped well before the impact.”
Which was shown to be 0.4 of a sec, with Kasino having run 35 metres to greet him. So my previous comment had nothing in relation to yours.
July 21st 2012 @ 7:59am
soapit said | July 21st 2012 @ 7:59am | Report comment
i have retracted that comment due to your statistics which you now claim are meaningless. or have you locked down a formula that takes into account all those factors you list that shows to you that 0.4s was enough in this case?
July 19th 2012 @ 9:29am
eagleJack said | July 19th 2012 @ 9:29am | Report comment
I agree that common sense prevailed in this instance. But it flies in the face of precedents set earlier this year.
Pritchard was suspended after Simmons clearly slipped into his shoulder. The contact was deemed accidental but the ruling was that the onus is on the tackler to adjust. I was of the belief there was nothing that Pritchard could have done differently. They threw up similar numbers about Simmons dropping significantly in no time at all. But the precedent was set. Make contact with the head and you are in trouble. One could argue that Pritchard had runs on the board for previous high shots. But so did Kasiano. He pleaded guilty to dangerous contact on O’Dwyer only 9 rounds ago.
Consistency is all the fans ask for.
July 19th 2012 @ 9:32am
Dogs Of War said | July 19th 2012 @ 9:32am | Report comment
I think a shoulder charge has a very different onus, as you have committed to making a hit that has so many variables that could go wrong, that just by performing a shoulder charge, you could be deemed to be reckless as you have very few options to react to a change in a situation.
July 19th 2012 @ 9:41am
eagleJack said | July 19th 2012 @ 9:41am | Report comment
Yeah fair enough but was Pritchards truly a shoulder charge? Looked like a good ball and all tackle, but due to Simmons slipping, contact was made between shoulder and head, as he wrapped his arms around. Similarly Wade Graham’s on Hoffman. To me a shoulder charge is running out of the line, and leading with the shoulder and nothing else.
July 19th 2012 @ 9:54am
Dogs Of War said | July 19th 2012 @ 9:54am | Report comment
I can’t remember the Pritchard tackle to be honest. But that said, my first comment applies, if you go for contact high and you slip up, then although it’s accidental contact, by targetting that area you invited the risk to go high if something happened as you are unable to react according. It’s why the right decision in this instance was seen, as Kasino was aiming where all players really should be aiming if they don’t want to risk a few weeks on the sideline.
July 19th 2012 @ 12:54pm
Chop said | July 19th 2012 @ 12:54pm | Report comment
Completely agree, the issue is the lack of consistency around decisions like this.
The two in SOO match 3 that were similiar there were people saying both should’ve been charged, then Kasiano is charged and gets off.
It’s ridiculous and the judiciary is a farce.
July 19th 2012 @ 9:33am
Australian Rules said | July 19th 2012 @ 9:33am | Report comment
Sensible decision and an approach I wish the AFL would take.
July 19th 2012 @ 10:12am
sledgeross said | July 19th 2012 @ 10:12am | Report comment
Didnt give it any rating Dogs of War, I just dont like commonsense being applied to certain players and not others. I have no problem per se with Kasiano getting off, its just other players have sat down for a week for much less.
From memory, jeremy Smith got a one week susepnsion 2 weeks ago when his bicep brushed someones head while effecting a tackle.
Lets apply commonsense to ALL players.
July 19th 2012 @ 10:25am
Dogs Of War said | July 19th 2012 @ 10:25am | Report comment
As I said in reply to your comment previously, if you target the player high, and you end up going higher than you wanted, you put yourself in that position of risk, and should be penalised accordingly. Coaches put a lot of emphasis on ball and all tackles, but you don’t have to do that to effect a tackle, especially these days where 2-3 players are involved. First man in should be trying to stop the runner, and let your support players wrap up the ball.
July 19th 2012 @ 10:34am
Nafe said | July 19th 2012 @ 10:34am | Report comment
I think it was a sensible decision. I wrote a blog piece myself about accidental contact and common sence. In reality, if the attacker contributes to the contact by slipping or ducking below shoulder height then this needs to be taken into account with all charges.
Kasiano was in my view not careless nor reckless but was clearly an accidential contact with the head with significant contibution by the attacker. If the NRL wish to show a duty of care and want to go down the track of charging all head contact no matter what, then a new grading needs to be introced where maybe 20 or 40 point grading for the Kasiano tackle, But this still is cofusing the fact of the tackle and will confuse fans further. Bill Harrigan has implemented too much confusion already to add further confusion to the game.
July 19th 2012 @ 11:13am
soapit said | July 19th 2012 @ 11:13am | Report comment
1st off, once again right decision.
2nd “50 centimetres in 0.4 of a second!
How is any rugby league player, let alone a giant forward meant to adjust his feet, body and arms to cope with those numbers?
You can’t. It’s impossible. Superman would struggle”.
he doesnt have to adjust all of those, it was only his arm that hit. adjust that and problem solved. and as i noted above cricketers manage to hit a much smaller target which moves a lot more than 0.5m with only a fraction more time. certainly doesnt require superpowers.
but its not the type of thing we should be putting set numbers on when there isnt really proper data to reference what the numbers really mean (as dogs of war and i concluded above). again right decision but lets not get carried away when confronted with some numbers
July 19th 2012 @ 11:34am
Dogs Of War said | July 19th 2012 @ 11:34am | Report comment
They aren’t running full steam with a 35 metre run up though are they?
July 19th 2012 @ 11:44am
The Barry said | July 19th 2012 @ 11:44am | Report comment
Kasiano was already moving. Cricketers react from a static starting position.
Kasiano effectively had to stop one movement and then commence another. Takes twice as long.
July 19th 2012 @ 5:23pm
Mals said | July 19th 2012 @ 5:23pm | Report comment
Punter doesn’t.
July 21st 2012 @ 7:45am
soapit said | July 21st 2012 @ 7:45am | Report comment
actually, all he has to do is take a bit of sting out of his swinging arm so he doesnt knock the bloke out. doesnt even have to adjust his aim at all so i’d say it would take less time to do that, not double.
otherwise yes thats all fair but just further demonstrates how pointless it is trying to argue based on numbers. so many variables. its a bit silly that this 0.5m in 0.4s seems to be the defining aspect of the case for a lot of people.
July 19th 2012 @ 11:21am
The Barry said | July 19th 2012 @ 11:21am | Report comment
This is the problem with judging everything in super slow mo. You see Moi Moi fall and think “He’s got time to adjust” but when it’s at normal speed it’s all over in literally a split second.
I can’t see what Kasiano did wrong. I can’t see how he possibly could have avoided the contact.
I disagree that his arm was swinging any more that it needed to effect a good tackle. The swinging arm is in the context of a haymaker trying to take someone’s head off. That clearly wasn’t the case.
This incident highlights the 18th man debate more than the head contact debate.