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The ones who would be suffering consequences now played in the 80s. The game was far slower then played by far smaller men.
Touch football is the future as long as that sport also, doesn?t throw up a lot of injuries specific to it. Because if it does then that sport is gooooone too.
The code encompasses two aspects, the processional side and the amateur side. The amateur side will live on forever in one form or another. The professional side is ruled by the fans and not the players or player welfare. The fans are being shafted, the professional side of this sport is a dead man walking as a result. You can?t f**k around the people that fund every aspect of the professional side and expect there to be no consequences as a result. League traded on toughness, League now survives off the fumes of its glorious gladiatorial past ? but people will see through that soon enough.
The game has gone soft, no two ways about it. What is interesting is that despite the crackdown on the spectacular, occasionally injury-inducing plays, injuries are still occurring at what appears to be an ever-increasing rate. Now that in of itself negates the ?player welfare is a primary concern? argument. Clearly player welfare is a concern only in regards to certain facets of play, everything else though, obviously not a concern whatsoever. Player welfare my arse. More to the point though, an abundance of injuries does not denote toughness, many sports have their fair share of injuries but most of them aren?t seen in the same light as League. Ultra long distance runners for example, they pick up and run through a myriad of injuries during their endeavors, hard folk for sure, gotta respect them but their brand of hard doesn?t turn heads in any significant way.
You?re right, the game doesn?t need shoulder charges to be spectacular. But they and the big hit (and to a smaller extent the biff) are the x-factor components of the sport. No other (team) sport has this x-factor in the abundance we once had. It is what separated us from out our competitors and essentially gave us the edge over them. They are what turn heads the most and what people remember the most. They all underpin the toughness legend that helped sell the game. Other factors like brilliant attack, speed, ball skills, well, they?re all largely subjective depending on one?s understanding of a sport, as such, they are in abundance in any given sport. But a big hit, you don?t need to have any understanding of a sport to get that, to be moved by it and to have it seared into your brain forever. It/they are the game?s crown jewels and we?re tossing them into the gutter, the game is on borrowed time as a result.
Most of these guys played in a time when we had few legitimate competitors. That is not the case now days, we needed an edge, we had an edge and now that?s all but gone. She's a tough ask now for sure.
Some chap in my neck of the woods (Wellington NZ) is just finishing up on ground-breaking research centered around forces generated during impact situations, albeit done on local club rugby players. It involved specially designed mouth guards that could measure the forces players encountered. Can?t remember too much more but to the PC brigade, it?ll be more fodder for them to feed off for sure.
