The Grand Final was rubbish because there were no shoulder charges or punches.:sarcasm:
We have to accept the requirements of the community now,or go the way of the dodo.
The issue with this is you people live in a f**king fantasy land. We based the shoulder charge decision on the lawsuits of a foreign sport that still allows shoulder charges, meanwhile we're inventing 'community standards' of a community that has a fairly universal hard-on for Ronda Rousey, a woman who makes a living belting six shades of shit out of other women.
But for what it's worth, punching doesn't matter anyway. It's a non-issue in terms of rules. Sin-bin it, whatever. As long as you ALSO actually use the sin-bin and send-off for cheating and dangerous tackles. If the sin-bin was used regularly the issue would balance itself out. The baffling thing is how the NRL even managed to influence players to change, considering it was always penalised, likely to be a sinbin, and a good chance of a suspension anyway before the 'crackdown'.
The real issue is the penalising (and lately suspending) of solid, fair hits because they might come close to being a type of tackle that might go wrong, while catty behaviour flourishes because players won't throw one anymore and refs are either unable to or too gutless to do something about it.
The attitude of appealing to modern 'community standards' is that it attracts exactly zero new fans while pushing away old fans. It's not a positive outcome. Old fans being full of positivity and enthsuiasm towards the game brings in new fans.
