The rule change madness at the NRL continues as ARL Commissioner Wayne Pearce has told the media that he will put forward ANOTHER potential rule change that would take effect before the 2021 NRL finals series.
The rule change would be that when a team kicks the ball into touch the opposition would get a 7 tackle set. The only time this would not apply is if a team kicks a 40-20, or a 20-40 (Which has never been done in the NRL).
This is completely ridiculous of course.
Aside from changing the rules going into the finals series, no one is asking for this. No one is watching the game right now and believes that a team should be penalised for finding touch. There is no good reason to bring this rule in.
So why is this rule being put forward?
The NRL will say they want to keep the ball in play more often. As though the shot clock on scrums and the fact a team can just choose to take a tap instead is not enough speeding up of the game.
They will conveniently leave out the fact that teams can stop play when they like for a captains challenge. That trainers can stop the play. That the on field referee can stop the play, and worst of all the video referee sitting in the bunker in Redfern can also stop the play.
In 2021 more people can stop a game of Rugby League at any point than we have ever allowed ion the entire history of the game. But yeah, lets change the kicking rules.
This rule change will be put to clubs, and of course the clubs with poor kicking games will endorse it while teams who have good kicking is their side will oppose it.
The fact is that the NRL competition in 2021 is moving away from being Rugby League and is becoming a hybrid game of its own. A sport that does not resemble what we see at any other level of Rugby League.
The game right now is too fast. It is way too messy. Teams consistently have more than 6 tackles in a set, which was never the intention of Rugby League once we limited tackles. Blow out scoreline have become the norm, the competition as a result has been one of the most lopsided in the games history and multiple teams have destroyed their own point scoring records, and the all time point scoring records with ease.
The NRL has taken one of the closest competitions in the world and turned it into a lopsided mess, and Wayne Pearce along with Peter V’Landys and Graham Annesley have fucked up the NRL competition over the last two years.
The sooner we go back to the rule set from 2019, the better.
