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Joined July 2012
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I'm here to defend the honour of rugby league
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Make no mistake, there is a media campaign being waged not just against shoulder charges, but against the game itself. You need only look…
Have you heard what League fans think of Hadley. Great commentator? Since he joined 9 he made popular every other commentator by accident! Fans all over the world despise him. Ray Hadley is an over hyped horse race caller.
Hadley and Wilson: sapping my pool of Olympic spirit
Star Spangled Banner is a moving anthem? It’s one of the worst anthems I can think of. You make it sound like it’s the French anthem or something.
I would rank the American anthem with the Australian anthem. Both are modern and rubbish.
Why I'm sick of Australian swimmers and their tears
Player welfare in Rugby Union? How many kids are paralysed in your barbaric scrums and rucks? Rugby is a more dangerous sport than League, the severity and consistency of injuries in Rugby is far worse than anything in League.
If League had anything like the sort of injuries you see in Rugby scrums then the shoulder charge would have been banned 10 years ago.
League has led the way on professionalism and player welfare and always will. The only difference between the two codes is that Rugby Union is free of media scrutiny and is more akin to a cult, in which members of the Rugby fraternity do not see problems within their own game, and so most Rugby fans are too intellectually challenged to actually grasp that their sport has its problems.
But that’s Rugby hypocrites for you. You won’t see the scrum or ruck banned any time soon, despite the thousands of Rugby players already with no movement below the neck thanks to the sport. Forget the tens of thousands of people with broken necks from scrums and rucks.
Player welfare? Don’t make me laugh. Rugby is perhaps the most dangerous team sport in the world as far as spinal injuries are concerned. Good job you have an old boys network in media and government to keep the issue brushed under the rug.
A plea to keep shoulder charges
I think you’re kidding yourselves, personally. The main flaw of the argument is the contention that popularity, global or otherwise, matters any to the Olympic elites and the sports they will allow for their cash-cow. Like they care that tens of millions around the world watch or participate in MMA.
If it was about popularity then nothing sports like Equestrian wouldn’t take place at the olympics. And other rich people sports for the silver spooners, like yacht racing and rowing, would be replaced by more global sports such as camel racing and 8-ball.
MMA has the credentials, but unfortunately it’s not much of a sport for establishment people.
Olympic MMA: Why it must happen for the sport
Just on ‘class war’, as an aside, isn’t it interesting how when oppressed working class movements, in sports or life in general, highlight the oppression they suffer, that it’s they – the oppressed – who are engaging in ‘class conflict’.
You see it very often in American politics. If you’re poor and mention the systematic, establishment oppression that plagues and hinders your community, you’re in the wrong for being ‘divisive’. Racial politics takes on similar narrative, you aren’t allowed to mention that racism exists, lest you’re “playing the race card”, even though race is economically and socially relevant and certainly merits discussion.
Similar seems to happen in sport. You can’t mention that League has been, for much of its existence, oppressed.
I’m drunk. Nice article… I think.
Rugby League - the code of hate?
The doctors don’t know anything about the shoulder charge that we don’t. They’re giving their opinions as doctors, a profession in which client safety is paramount. If doctors had their say, and if they thought there was support for it, they would back a ban to remove tackling. If doctors had there say there wouldn’t be a Rugby League or Rugby Union code, both sports, with or without shoulder charges, are too dangerous.
If doctors wanted to act on facts then why are scrums and rucks still apart of Rugby? Everybody knows that scrums are a problematic area and are marred by broken necks and the like, not to mention concussions for the many forwards who cannot scrum correctly. Look at the hypocrisy. For Rugby League journalists and doctors cry out “Is somebody going to have to break their neck before we stamp out the shoulder charge?” and in Rugby the bent journalists and doctors completely ignore the fact that players are leaving scrums paralysed from the neck down at an alarming rate. It’s already happening in Rugby scrums and rucks, but that’s not reason enough to get rid of them. Where as in Rugby League it’s not happened forever, but the theoretical notion that there might one day be a broken neck from a shoulder charge is supposed to be a damning argument against it?
I’m telling you there is a bias here that you aren’t aware of. The shoulder charge would be banned and Rugby League under immense scrutiny – far more imaginable than what we’re seeing now – if a player happened to break a neck by a shoulder charge. It would be game over for the shoulder charge, in all capital letters, if tomorrow night a player broke his neck by a shoulder charge. Yet a player in Rugby could break his neck in a scrum and nobody takes any notice, because Rugby is a sport protected by media and bent doctors, where as League clearly isn’t.
I could cite so many people who’ve broken their necks in a Rugby scrum or ruck. Where are the doctors, journalists and lawyers demanding both are removed from the game of Rugby Union? Where are they? They’re harder to find than Waldo.
The day we start taking every doctors suggestion on board is the day that we – and I use the word we intentionally, referring to all participants and viewers of collision sports – might as well leave our sports.
I’m surprised Rugby fans are so happy with this situation, as opposed to being worried, as you would expect. I say that because Rugby League could survive a shoulder charge ban and still be the Rugby League many of us know and love in almost every other way. Rugby Union would not survive doctor scrutiny in the same way. Rugby is protected as a sport given that it’s popular amongst the establishment and ruling class of society, in a political and business sense, and can thus survive normal scrutiny… but only for so long. Do you not understand the precedent that will be set here? Out of self interest I would have thought you’d understand the outcome of such a move.
I hope, if you’re rallying behind doctors and calling for a ban of the shoulder charge in league, that you’re ready for what’ll happen to Rugby Union down the line. Sure Rugby has establishment favour, but that won’t last forever. If other sports are forced to change then Rugby will be left sticking out like a sore thumb. The current hysteria spearheaded by rags and docs will be coming to your sport soon, rest assured. Your sport is already much more dangerous than League for significant injuries, so consider yourself lucky that up to now there has been, seemingly, a pact of silence between journos and docs in regards to the Rugby injury crisis.
Don’t think, like so many League fans did up until now, that your sport is safe.
The farcical shoulder charge debate
I suppose the tricky part is defining, in a Rugby League context, what a shoulder charge is. You say there are 10 shoulder charges a game, I would disagree with that. But, like with so many contentious issues, it tends to come down to interpretation. If you stuck a Rugby ref in an NRL game I’m adamant he’d find at least 50 shoulder charges. Which would still put the concussion frequency much higher on a per capita basis, but I’d argue it’s well and truly leveled out by the fact that it is a low percentage play, and we therefore do see less of them, and often under specific circumstances.
There are other factors which contribute to a per capita differential. I don’t buy that the tackle in itself is as big an issue as the context in which it’s made. I think the problem is that there has been a lax attitude, and I’ve supported it myself in the past, which excuses shots with the shoulder/chest that go high. A shoulder charge that slips up has not been punished to the extent as a high swinging arm, and so players have taken liberties these last few years and basically ran around belly-flopping and shouldering people in the head, because “Mate, that’s rugby league!” has been the response by many fans, pundits and players.
But I don’t buy for one moment that the shoulder charge is uncontrollable and that people are going high by freakish mistake, so we must therefore rid the game of the shoulder charge. Yes it is high risk, but so is lifting someone in the tackle as I pointed out, but we do not ban that. What we need to do, if anything, is stress responsibility and punishment that will follow if you don’t go out of your way to keep the challenge below the neck.
At the very least I would hope we could be reasonable and look at stricter punishment for high shoulder charges. Exhaust the alternatives before doing the ridiculous and axing perhaps one of the games most appealing aspects.
For myself there is a middle way here, a middle ground that would ensure the game is free of legal action, and safer, while not depriving completely the fans of the shoulder charge. I don’t believe it’s a dichotomy where we either keep with shoulder charges to the face every other round or make wholesale changes and scrap the shoulder charge in its entirety.
Nice arguments you make, even if I disagree on the 10 shoulder charges a game bit.
The farcical shoulder charge debate
Nonsense toff sports like rowing and equestrian, among with many, many more, make any argument against League on the grounds of international participation and popularity to be laughable at best.
League of course won’t ever be in the Olympics, but certainly there’s a better case for League than there is many an Olympic sport.
Rugby league should be an Olympic sport