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Dave Smith and Daniel Anderson have made the sudden and savage decision to outlaw on-field punching and another element of Rugby League as we know it has died a sordid and sorry death.
This is a foul and desperate episode in NRL history. As a concept, it might be the one that causes the four horsemen of the apocalypse to saddle up.
In any event, there is a powerful sense of depression with the direction the league is being dragged in.
Smith, because he is a dull dishrag of a man, and devoid of either conviction or character, was said to be “concerned” about the game’s “image”. He was worried that the small explosions of violence that occasionally erupt between inflamed adults were a bad look.
The irony is that Smith and Anderson have themselves committed a heinous assault on the very essence of Rugby League.
By caving to misguided public pressure, their malignant decision has consequences far more dire and depressing than the prospect of some player having to be propped up in a mechanically-operated chair and spoon-fed pureed corned beef in an old folks home while using what brain cells he has left to brood on the smouldering remains of his memories of when Origin was an opportunity for slightly less regulated and slightly more reckless football.
And contrary to the impression that the hysterical and forensic attention given to the Origin incident has created, players are not out on the field rolling around and brawling like lawless hyenas in the grip of blood-lust frenzy; but it is rugby league. And in rugby league, barbarism is never far below the surface.
This – the possibility that at any given moment the only loosely-leashed forces of any given player could flame into violent action – creates a beautiful, terrible tension.
The convulsive knee-jerk attempt to remove this tension is another example of the excessive safety-proofing that is creeping cancerously into so many elements of adult life.
Now, players and fans alike are forced to suffer under the staggering weight of Smith and Anderson’s crude and unjust ruling. Now, any player who punches an opponent will be automatically sin binned, no matter what the circumstances.
Now, much of that beautiful terrible tension will be dulled down, flattened out, and deadened. No one knows what we will be left with yet, but it seems like it will be a downhill drift on all fronts.
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