A couple of things from me - firstly, I’ve been saying for a while that I believe the shoulder charge ban has had an unintended consequence of causing more concussions for defenders. As players are no longer allowed to cock their shoulder to brace for impact, they have to wrap their arms - this opens up their head for initial point of contact if they get their timing slightly wrong. Whilst banning the shoulder charge has undoubtedly protected the ball carrier and eliminated some of the higher impact shoulder charges to the head, I think we have simply switched the balance of risk from the attacker to the defender. I have no actual stats to back this up, so accept I could be wrong, but would love to know the percentage split of concussions between attackers and defenders, as I’m pretty sure the vast majority are defenders.
Secondly, (I mentioned this on the NRL forum), I think if we’re going to introduce additional players to cover HIA, there has to be a consequence for using the extra players that discourages teams from rorting the system. The only way I can see it working is if you increase bench to 6 men, but you’re only allowed to use 4 of them. You can only access the 5th or 6th player if you have more than 2 players rubbed out (they can’t be used whilst off for testing, only once confirmed failed). Alongside this, any player failing their HIA should be required to sit out playing AND training for a minimum of 10 days - that shows we’re taking HIA and potential impacts serious (most other sports have a mandatory stand down period nowadays) and will stop teams thinking of tactically using the system as it means their down a minimum of 2 players for next week. Would 100% get rorted in the GF though.
