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Opinion

How rugby league devolved into a defence-orientated quagmire

Dalt's new author
Roar Rookie
23rd May, 2020
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Dalt's new author
Roar Rookie
23rd May, 2020
43
1007 Reads

As a junior I heard that spiel about a good big man beating a good little man a few times, and dismissed it as nonsense.

Little blokes can consistently win games when the big, tired forwards start sucking in the big ones.

The problem now is that there are no tired forwards. In the 17-man game, teams have at least three and sometimes four fresh forwards ready to do their 20-minute spurts of all-out war.

The good sides have got it down to such a fine art. Their defences don’t fatigue and even the best attacks can’t score a four-pointer on them.

Our game has slowly evolved over 30 years into this defence-orientated quagmire. The number of interchanges needs to come down to four.

Sio Siua Taukeiaho runs into Jesse Bromwich and Dale Finucane.

(Photo by Mark Brake/Getty Images)

The player welfare argument is complete nonsense. Back in the day, once you were off, you were off. Reduce the interchange, get some fatigue in their legs and watch the game open up.

That will even the playing field for little, speedy blokes to start ripping and tearing.

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The scrums are nothing short of embarrassing. Scrummaging used to be a art you practiced at training as a ten-year-old: binding correctly, trying to steal the loosehead, pushing your opponents back and stealing their feed.

A ten-year-old club player knew these skills. Scrums were like buying a lotto ticket. Winning one against the loosehead was great forward play.

Now, they are just embarrassing. And it saddens me. They’re playing first grade and these days not one forward could scrummage if his life depended on it.

It started with refs turning a blind eye to the number seven throwing it in the second row. Now, 30 years later, it’s a dog’s breakfast and an embarrassment.

The rah rahs haven’t let it over time evolve into the dog’s breakfast it is today.

If the scrums were a fair dinkum contest for possession, they could actually have a contest between smart five-eighths, speedy centres and cover-defending by fullbacks.

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Our game still has very gifted big and little players. It’s just the space is not there.

Bring back a real contest between big and little men. How good would our great game be then?

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