The difficulty with all these types of tackles is that at its heart rugby league is a very dangerous and brutal game played by super fit and strong risk tacking athletes. Some injuries are horrific. Broken, jaws, faces , noses, serious concessions, dreadful knee and leg/ ankle injuries; dislocations and breaking of shoulders, elBows, arms and fingers ribs and hips....I will stop now.
Reading through all the various comments about Tryell’s suspension is interesting. The game now identifies shoulder charges, lifting pile driver, mid air, head slam, chicken wings, crushers, cannonballs, now hip drop legs type tackles. Then calls for further tackles like’ rib breakers ‘ to be outlawed. The tackle that put me in hospital back in the day was the razzle dazzle where I was swung around by the arm and then tripped over ( And it’s still legal) and I face planted into Brighton oval and woke up in an ambulance.
My point is when does it all tackle banning categories stop? Will tackling be banned? When a player runs up full tilt and slams into an opponent and flattens him ( now known as a ‘shooter’ tackle) the crowd go up cheering wildly, commentators say ‘great hit’ and then a best ‘big hits’ reel is composed. The opponent sometimes doesn’t get up or groggily tries to work out what year it is as he plays the ball in slow motion. Maybe the ‘shooter’ tackle should be banned. How come the razzle dazzle hasn’t been banned? That’s the general sort of tackle that our player Ford tried to legally execute on Luke Keary but was too clumsy. Had he hung on to Keary’s upper arm and then threw him over his leg .no problem. Maybe all rugby league fans are hypocrites as every tackle and collision brings the possibility of serious injury to the players involved. Yet we still watch and cheer on our teams. We want enforces, big boopers, hard heads etc in our teams.
The game is sleep walking into a point where the essence of attacking team overcoming the defence
team to score a try will be lost. Every banned tackle opens up nuances and opportunities for exploitation by the attacking team and arguments about the category and gradings of tackles and supporters feeling their player and/or club has been unfairly dealt with in comparison to others. Conspiracy theories and suspicion of skulduggery by administrators becomes rife.
Anyway, I’m off to bed now believing that Tyrell and our club have been hard done by with his suspension.