I have been terribly worried. As a lover of sport, it is always a concern when developments suggest that one of my beloved sports may find itself imploding.
Not just imploding, but sucking itself down the drain of irrelevance, collapsing from triumph and might to a state of decay and degradation, to become ranked among the Greco-Roman wrestlings and dwarf-tossings of the world.
True sportophiles live in a state of constant fear that all they hold dear may be taken away.
I felt my fears being realised when I read of the Ben Te’o affair, which has brought forth a terrible spectre: the chance that we may – oh, it’s painful to even type it – we may lose the shoulder charge from the game.
And good God, wouldn’t that be the last straw? After all the tinkering and fiddling with the game we’ve seen over the years – a change to the stripping the ball rule here, an introduction of golden point there, a failure to force Ray Warren to retire in the middle – it would just be the final fly in the ointment, the last intolerable cockroach turd in the Mars Bar, if we were to lose the shoulder charge.
Because after all, it’s the shoulder charge that makes rugby league such a rough, tough, knockabout, manly, piratical game to begin with. Without the shoulder charge, rugby league would basically just be netball with more sexual ambiguity.
Take the shoulder charge away, and what are you supposed to do to a player running at you with the ball? Tackle him? With your arms? Yeah, great suggestion, grandma!
I hardly think that a game full of people making actual tackles would be in the spirit of Dally Messenger. The great appeal of rugby league is that it has always been a real man’s man’s game, a game for the gruff no-nonsense inner woodchopper residing within us all.
Rugby league is not a game for tacklers, it’s a game for people who can’t be bothered tackling, who consider tackling beneath them, who have the guts and grit to avoid tackling their opponent in favour of attempting to run into them like a blind dog crashing into the fridge, half missing, and allowing them to skip away through the defensive line while that big tough manly man goes spinning away harmlessly.
Tackling, frankly, is for sissies.
Just ask Ben Te’o, who gave moving testimony in his defence, saying he had simply tried to “hit him hard”.
Exactly. That’s what our great game is all about – hitting people. Hard. Hard, brutal, inefficient hitting is the heart and soul of rugby league, and without it, watch the crowds plummet.
The spectators will all rush off to watch the GWS Giants in the AFL, a competition where you’re not only allowed to shoulder charge, you can actually jump on other men’s backs. No contest.
Sure, some people might say that shoulder charges can be “dangerous”, but isn’t being a rugby league player inherently dangerous anyway? Being a rugby league player’s girlfriend certainly is: fact is, it’s a dangerous game. If there isn’t a genuine threat of serious incapacitating injury occurring within the rules of the game, who cares?
No, no, we must not ban the shoulder charge. In fact, we should go the other way and ban regulation tackling. Make it a rule that you can only tackle via shoulder charge. That’ll sort the men from the boys.
Watch the bidding war for TV rights head skyward after every NRL game becomes a huge, frenetic human pinball game, massive men hurtling up and down the field, careening off each other, stopping only to have neck braces applied and count the trainer’s fingers. It’d be like a slightly slower, slightly more confusing version of ice hockey.
We could of course take things further, in our efforts to bring out the animal nature of rugby league that is too often hidden behind a veil of quick footwork and metrosexuality. If players not only apply shoulder charges, but wear metallic spiked shoulder pads while doing so, the frisson of danger injected into the game would be positively riveting.
Arming the players would help even more: if a shoulder charge is exciting, imagine how much more exciting it’d be if players could coathanger each other with golf clubs!
There are many other ways to spice the NRL up – catapults, envenomed boots, trained dogs and so forth – but the first step must be to preserve the shoulder charge.
The commission must throw out Te’o’s charge entirely, enshrine the shoulder charge in legislation, and snap-freeze Ray Warren in liquid nitrogen.
Do it now, or lose our great game forever.
David Heidelberg
Guest
Not a St George fan but Tony Smiths try saving shoulder charge on the line to put an Illawarra centre (Rodwell?) over the touch line was one of the greatest moments in Rugby League. No thought of self preservation, just did everything to win the match, a tackle would not have sufficed. Do we want to see a day where such an act would be penalised? Earned his crappy team the right to lose another Grand Final.
Rugby realist
Guest
Haha must be just me. I love Warren and his random comments, excitement, and quite simply, his voice.
Bob
Guest
Your a dick
mushi
Roar Guru
Martin Lang - League Visionary We could call the 2050 trophy the Martin Lang cup in the spirit of kick ball's William Webb Eliis
Jaceman
Guest
I agree with your tingue in cheek analysis response but I am assume you were doing the same saying Warren was the best caller in any rugby code - how can you tell - he is always arguing with gould over nothing or maybe thats the idea...
soapit
Guest
get rid of the careless high tackle charge. a high shot is a high shot and the players brains should be big enough to be able to concentrate hard enough to avoid it. accidental should be the only qualification for when people fall in to the tackle.
Nathan of Perth
Guest
Yeah, something best employed when you have defensive support and are looking to make a psychological statement rather than a standard piece of your defensive arsenal.
Nathan of Perth
Guest
Its same with the "Oh, well if you think is a bad kick, why don't you try and kick better!" Sounds nice rhetorically but makes little since to say comment can't be made unless we're a professional athlete earning multiples of the average national wage.
steve b
Guest
Bloody wel said Crosscoder
AGO74
Guest
Oikee - I opened your link but my attention was quickly diverted away from the RL story to the photo gallery on Cairns Bikini Babes. Thanks for the tip!
The Barry
Roar Guru
Slightly off subject - but isn't Te'o off contract at the end of this season. He'd be a fantastic pick up for a team. Gets limited game time because of Broncs glut of quality backrowers - I reckon he's quality and could play the bulk of the 80. He's come a long way from the mistake prone kid that started with the Tigers.
The Barry
Roar Guru
Some great points QLDER... Groat DID choose to run with his head. He was quite upright and when he saw Te'o out of the corner of his eye he turned towards him and ducked his head - perfectly natural reaction - which caused the contact. Te'o didn't aim at the head or do anything wrong. Pritchards tackle was the same - Simmons realised that he was going to be belted and curled up as he came into the impact. In both instances the tackle was aimed at the correct area when it commenced but because of subsequent action by the ball-carrier that takes only a fraction of a second they ended up high. There has been nothing wrong with this tackle for 104 years. Why now ? Inconsistency is the other major drama here - why does Pritchard get one week, Te'o potentially four and Vatuvei gets nil. The dinosaur argument. I love it when you disagree with someone and they say "aah, you're a dinosaur" as if that ends the argument. It's up to dads to get their kids playing footy. I'm lucky, my missus' dad and brother played footy growing up so it's fairly normalised for her and I will have little trouble getting the boys onto the paddock when they come of age. Teaching my four year old skills at the moment. Picking the ball up on the run, passing left and right and....the shoulder charge ! Dinosaur !
oikee
Guest
http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2012/04/12/214175_local-news.html Nothing to do with shoulder charge, but i know you like this sort of thing CC. I just get so annoyed with propaganda from other code's. I bite me tongue every time and i am glad they did this study. It is what everyone north of the b-line knows, yet they try to tell us otherwise. Toowoomba is nearly the size of Darwin by the way. Darwin has around 180 thousand, Toowoomba has 150 thousand, Toowoomba could take Darwin on our own if we wanted to, we leave them to it because their brains are fried, ? No really, they are, it is like white hot up their, even the Flamingoes left this area 5 thousand years ago, it was just to hot for them. :) Queensland will have 5 cities bigger than Darwin with-in the next 10 years. We have 4 now, Goldie, Logan, Ipswich Cabollture. Plus Sunny coast is getting its own city Stdium and will be bigger overall. Queensland is like a powerhouse for new cities, just call us little chinatown.
Ben Pobjie
Expert
BA Sports, Ray Warren has been having a night off every night for the last 30 years.
Ben Pobjie
Expert
Gareth I like your thinking. My only regret is that Martin Lang retired before this innovation could be introduced.
Ben Pobjie
Expert
They banned it in rugby union, yet players still seem capable of charging at the line...
B.A Sports
What did i hear someone say on radio that made me laugh "you can still shoulder charge in the Lingerie League". Seriously though. Shoulder charge should stay. But its high risk, high reward, and if you hit the ball carriers head, your suspended. simple. And speaking of headaches, is there any chance Ray Warren is having a night off tonight?
Hoy
Roar Guru
Have seen that already I think. It seems they are banning the shoulder without actually banning it, because they know there would be full blown uproar I think. It is honestly like the government not actually banning smoking but making it extremely diffcult for people to do it. Second to that, if they do go that way, then I feel the NRL needs to squash the advertising of the game showing shoulders etc. You can't have it both ways.
oikee
Guest
Agree, we need to keep our big huge ugly players looking good. Nobody likes Colli-flower ears or broken noses. Brice Gibbs has enough problems without aggravating things.
baller
Guest
hayne