PopTart wrote:
If he led with the elbow then the attacker is at fault.
Clearly I'm not a ref but I get what you are saying. It's not easy to make it black and white but they are trying to make it so to make it clearer.
If the defender 'accidentally' hits an attacker in the head in the act of making a tackle, unless the attacker makes it impossible not to, then it's careless at best but still warrants a sanction. Severity being relevant to the circumstances.
Exactly, well almost.
It’s a high speed collision sport and two individuals are part of a collision, they’re both moving & reacting to the shifting posture of the other, it’s inevitable that with close to 400 collisions a game X 27 games a season that there will be contact with the head one way or the other. Unless it’s premeditated or malicious they’re both trying to avoid head contact but it happens sometimes and no one’s to blame.
My other point is that in their haste to eliminate defenders making head contact with attackers, particularly the banning of shoulder charges, they have created an imbalance in the collisions between attacker and defender.
Imaging someone like Jason Tamulolo charging at you and you have to open up your arms while trying to aim your shoulder under the ball then JT dips his body rotates his shoulder and hits you in the chest, something it’s illegal for you to do!
The rules have created an imbalance in those collisions which massively favours the attacking player while leaving the defender open to injury.
Somewhere along the line we’ll have to accept that if Rugby League is going to continue then we’ll have to also accept that unsavoury collisions will happen, on both sides of the ball.
If they won’t or can’t accept that then their efforts to save the game might actually kill it off
