The NRL judiciary has given us plenty of talking points over the last couple of weeks, and continue to rule with the consistency of lumpy pancake batter.
Given we now live in a blessed era of NRL, where week-to-week change is not only tolerated, it’s practically expected, perhaps it’s time to shift the magnifying glass from corner posts to the system that rules on foul play within the game.
First thing to consider is the open secret that a player’s profile and their impending rep games are the most significant aspects when ruling on a charge.
We all know it happens, and the NRL insults our intelligence year after year by claiming there’s no preferential treatment.
So why not just come out and draft an actual rule that says State of Origin matches are exempt from match suspension?
We’d ensure that the cream of the crop (barring injury) is always available to play in the game’s showpiece.
That way, we could pass down *some* punishment on blokes who break the rules mid season.
Hayne almost certainly deserves some time on the sideline, regardless of how affectionate his headbutt might have been – but I can understand why he’s cleared to reignite the rivalry against Slater in just under a week’s time.
We’ve heard suggestions that perhaps players can wear fines instead of time out of the game, but that’s a pretty slack punishment when it’s a week’s pay for unheralded players and pocket change for the game’s elite.
Personally, I don’t really like the idea of exempting State of Origin.
There’s really no greater punishment than forcing a player to sit out rep footy, especially with the series on the line (at least in theory) and coupled with that is the strongest message the game can send short of bans and delisting.
But more than that, it would help to reign in the egos of these players who think they’re bigger than the game.
It’s a tough lesson, but for the good of the game, surely it’s best to help steer our superstars clear of the sort of arrogance that makes the Australian cricket team so unappealing.
Would it then be an acceptable compromise to allow players to “buy” their way back into Origin by accepting a more heavily weighted, but delayed punishment?
Or to allow a suspended sentence and probation period where the player can avoid a short suspension at the risk of incurring a much longer suspension if the re-offend?
Whatever the answer is, I’m sick of the way things work now.
It’s comparable to the “two sets of books” that the Storm run, and makes the NRL look like hypocrites by endorsing this supposed independent judicial commitee that coincidentally matches up remarkable lenience with that umbrella term, “the good of the game.”
But really, that’s just a contentious issue that’s at the tip of the iceberg and on the tips of our tongues. I think we could go deeper and look to reform the whole system.
Here are some ideas to get some discussion started.
With Slater dodging a charge with intent, but no contact and Hayne dodging a charge with contact and no intent, perhaps we need to look at each aspect independently of one another.
It couldn’t hurt to consider what impact there is on the victim as well. So lets restructure the way we allocate charges, so instead of having a grade and an offense we implement a structure of three elements that combine to form a more tailored charge that fits what happened.
In the examples below, I’m mainly thinking about charges for physical contact, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t also include spitting, swearing, racial slurs, etc – basically any kind of conduct against the rules of the game.
First element is the intent, and we have a scale from “Unavoidable accident” to “Premeditated intent to cause significant harm” with a few shades of grey in between.
In the Parramatta vs Storm game, Hayne would be somewhere in the middle.
He obviously lashed out, but it was in the heat of the moment, and it was more of a push than a strike.
Slater would be up in the highest gradings. He went in to deliberately attack Hayne as retaliation for what had happened earlier.
The second element would be the action, where we’d look at what actually happened, ranging from “No contact made” to “Heavy contact causing match ending injury”.
In this component, Slater earns a reprieve, Hayne gets a “light contact” grading.
The last element is the impact on the victim, from “No impact” to “Season ending injury”.
In the Slater/Hayne battle, both would escape with the lowest grading, but to use another example, Bodene Thompson’s shot on Travis Waddell that broke his jaw in two places would have initially been graded close to the highest impact, and retroactively downgraded due to the young hooker’s remarkably quick recovery.
It’d take some tweaking, but we could either add each element together, with low gradings subtracting from the total, for example:
Slater: Intent to cause significant harm (400 points) + No contact (-100 points) + No impact (-100 points)
Hayne: Reactionary striking (200 points) + Light contact (0 points) + No impact (-100 points)
Or we could start with a basic 100 points, and then multiply all components together, for example:
Slater: Intent to cause significant harm (x4) + No contact (x0.5) + No impact (x0.5)
Hayne: Reactionary striking (x2) + Light contact (x1) + No impact (x0.5)
That’s in it’s simplest form.
In reality you’d expand it even further to include the specifics of a charge:
Slater: (Premeditated)(Intent to cause significant harm)(by striking)(with an elbow) +with+ (No contact) +causing+ (No impact)
O’Donnell: (Reckless)(Lifting tackle)(without leg separation)(assisted) +with+ (Heavy contact)(to the head) +causing+ (Injury requiring game stoppage)(to the head and neck)
And so on.
The beauty of it is that the whole thing functions as a madlib type thing, and determining a charge would basically be a step-by-step checklist considering all relevant aspects, so there’s much less chance of loopholes like Hayne’s argument that there was no “intent to cause significant harm” as required by the striking charge.
It also means there’s little need for interpretation on the part of the match review commitee or judiciary panel.
But just some food for thought anyway. Feel free to pick holes or discuss your own judicial concepts.
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