Drew-Sta sculls his English Breakfast cup of tea before lining up the first Australian forward and hitting him with a perfectly timed tackle.
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The cold shoulder
The last few days have been amusing to watch as the media, forums and players have thrown up their arms at the outlawing of the shoulder charge. It’s amusing because people seem to think it’s the end of the physicality that rugby league has been renowned for.
It’s not.
In fact, there’s perhaps some wisdom in this decision that the ARLC haven’t considered. What is that, you might ask?
Simple – the return of technique to tackling.
See, the issue at hand within rugby league is many of the players are lazy about the way they go in for a tackle. Now, most of the meatheads that take the field are nothing more than bionic robots that intend to destroy their opposition with collision. This is fine. Meatheads can be meatheads for all I care as they’re going to be the ones who will learn the hard way.
But the ‘thinking’ forward? They’re going to be snickering at this, because they know something. It’s old school, in fact, and most of these young forwards are too stupid to know about it.
It’s the
solar plexus.
Yes, that’s right; the
solar f**king
plexus. It’s latin for “hurtin’ spot”.
Most of you namby pamby wimps would be sitting there scratching your balls going ‘What the hell is this guy talking about?’ Well, chumps, take your hand and put it to your chest. Move it down til you feel the bottom of your sternum. Now, poke your finger a few times with some force about a centimetre below the sternum and feel the slight discomfort your getting from your moisturised fingers.
Go on, poke it a bit harder. Hurts, huh. In case you’re as thick headed as the meatheads crying for the return of the shoulder charge, I’ve given you a picture of where it is, as shown by some creepy guy on Wikipedia.
Now, imagine this – you’re running at the defensive line and that bald, angry looking guy called Mick Weyman is running at you. You grin, knowing he can’t shoulder charge you. You run at him, he runs at you. He drops his shoulder, you frown. He sits his shoulder right in that spot and pumps you like a sack of runny manure. Suddenly your breath leaves you, your feet are in the air, the ball is out of your arms and you’re lying on your back desperately trying to breathe as Mick rubs your face in the dirt and laughs.
I guarantee you that as impressive as a shoulder charge looks, its nothing more than two very hard stones hitting each other and deflecting. In a proper tackle, where the tackler uses some technique, the force of his shoulder into the
solar plexus plus the physics behind a 110kg man pointing his entire contact into that one little spot will leave you on the ground partially paralysed from the pain of the hit.
This is where it gets interesting. Rugby league players all the way back to the inception of the game have known about this spot. Why? I don’t know; my initial guess is the education system saw fit to teach people the best parts of the body to hit if you were in a pub brawl. But I digress. Players knew it existed, and for years and years and years they’ve seen fit to aim at that exact point. Why?
Because it hurts. Because it immobilises the player correctly. Because you don’t require fifty other fricken players to do it like this gang tackling shit that goes on.
Frankly, they did it because it worked. And rugby league forwards should realise that the rubbish they call a tackling technique is nothing more than throwing your body NFL style into the oncoming player and mindlessly wrapping your arms around parts of his body.
Have a look at this:
Don’t you want to see more of this type of technique in the game? Don’t you want to see good, strong, one on one tackles that take a level of skill to accomplish?
Take a step back, rugby league fans, and have a good look at what you’re watching the game for. Are we mindless? Are we simply interested in contact at all costs? Are we interested in flashy shoulder charges that make us look like dodgem cars on legs? Or are we interested in technique, skill and hitting a man properly where it hurts.
If you need proof I’m right, run at me and find out.
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Words - 748
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