The shoulder charge – how is this still a thing?

The ban on shoulder charges in the NRL was brought back into focus again this week.

Roosters forward Kane Evans was penalised for a shoulder charge on Sam Kasiano, but not subsequently charged with any offence by the match review committee.

This has led to some very disingenuous commentary from certain high profile members of the rugby league media who have sought to imply that because Evans wasn’t charged by the match review committee that somehow there is now confusion about whether the shoulder charge is banned or not.

It is.

Not every high or lifting tackle results in a judiciary appearance, nor every referee’s report, and the same is true of the shoulder charge for now.

Suggesting that the lack of a suspension for Evans signals some sort of lack of clarity is a pathetic attempt to muddy crystal clear waters. The shoulder charged is outlawed and the game is better without it.

The reality is that modern rugby league is already a brutal collision sport with incredibly fast and incredibly large men hurtling into each other with a ferocity that has increased by an order of magnitude since the era the shoulder charge advocates like to hearken back to.

Plus in the case of Evans’ hit on Kasiano all he had to do was get his lead arm up and away from his body and he could have inflicted essentially the same amount of force and he wouldn’t have been penalised.

But in the end this article, and likely every other article on this topic, is probably a waste of space because there is no debate to be won when it comes to the shoulder charge ban.

Sadly at this stage, discussion about the shoulder charge has taken on an entirely political tenor, with partisans on both sides and zero role for rational argument. Positions are based on a world view, not an analysis of the pros and cons. Advocates for the shoulder charge are not interested in laying out a rational argument, and they’re not interested in hearing one either.

The response is purely emotional and in a lot, though not all cases people want shoulder charges returned to the game because they don’t like the type of people who were happy to see them banned in the first place.

Supporters of the shoulder charge ban are accused of wanting to “turn the game into touch” or wanting the players to “play in skirts”, a frame of reference which probably tells you everything you need to know about the person using it. In this sense the debate is akin the to the preposterous slippery slope argument that marriage equality will somehow lead to bestiality.

Shoulder charge advocates who think they are being particularly clever offer a sort of conspiratorial confession that maybe they are just dinosaurs, at once behind the times but pining for something lost. This contrived humility is really just a call to tribalism, a tip of the hat to that vanished, illusory, heyday.

In the end thankfully this is all just noise, in large part no doubt to drive ratings and sell newspapers. The NRL has already indicated that they will tighten the rules further so that any shoulder charge results in a suspension. If you don’t believe me about the vitriol in this debate then I invite you to look at the response NRL CEO Dave Smith got when he posted to this effect on Twitter.

The NRL should be applauded for not bowing to baser interests but rather doubling down on a safer future for our players.

It will not appease the self-confessed rugby league luddites but for me when it comes to bringing back the shoulder charge I’ll steal a line from Generation Kill’ s Major-General Mattis: not only no, but hell no (language warning).