McShane got his hands in almost every tackle. Outcome was successful slowing PTB while opposition player tried to disentangle, and at least 2 “knock ons” won.

Whilever cheating gets rewarded players will do it to gain an advantage. All sides do it to some extent but I particularly noticed McShane last night.

I’ve also seen players drop the ball when in possession and tackled by 2+ players when they fee they’ll win a penalty.

If we can get rid of this crap it will significantly enhance the spectacle.

Powell, thank god he's extended his contract at Cas, some on here really like him, candidly he is a poor looser, always Blames others for his shortcomings , look at last nights game, Thaller tried everything to help Cas and he comes out with they got some bad calls. He is a miserable bitch, I wouldn't pee on him if he was on fire.
The good news, we played well , we won and I'm happy, I even had my testicles played with by two Cas women, well one was a women .

They could have done with those ball handling skills on the pitch.

Powell has been found out to be an average coach , Leeds have dodged a bullet here . Apart from one outstanding season in 2017 his record is bang average .

His constant carping about referees is very tiresome , he's got a ton of injuries , like no one else has ??

Worst of all is the constant head shaking and looks of disgust he shows whenever one of his team makes a mistake .

His management under pressure looks very suspect , in coaching terms no better than say Chester or Radford .

He is a serial loser. He has a losers mentality and he's a petulant little b-tch just like his players. I don't think he'll ever win a trophy.

my gawd where do you think he learned his trade, now it comes back against you do you only see what happens in the ruck

Wherever he "learned" it is irrelevant, the fact is that it's cheating and it spoils the game.

The whole ruck area is a mess. In an age where SL is under serious pressure, if seasoned fans are getting narked with it then how do you think new markets will take to it?

Ball security in the tackle has always been difficult to police in RL. The current rules aren't really working though.

It wasn’t hard to police when the attacker simply had responsibility to keep hold of the ball, and there was no two man tackle stripping nonsense.

Just allow stripping of the ball regardless of the numbers in the tackle and put the onus on the ball carrier.

Could you allow stripping on initial contact only?

There’s so much wrestle these days that it could get extremely messy otherwise.

Maybe once the referee calls the tackle held, the man in possession can’t be dispossessed and play is suspended until the PTB - i.e. no knock-on or stripping allowed. We need to remove the incentive for defenders to displace the ball or for the attacker to lose it on purpose when more then one player is in the tackle, just to win the penalty.

The whole stripping the ball out is getting annoying. I don’t think you can blame the refs as it’s largely 50/50 whether it’s a loose carry or an actual strip. Every tackler needs to wrap the ball up to stop the offload. 2 refs is only solution I can think of, and even then it’s still bound to be contentious.

WRT comments on Powell. I think a coach rarely has the full package. McDermott to me wasn’t much of a skills coach and our rugby under him was fairly poor, but he knew how to win a final, get a team motivated and manage big egos. Powell to me, coaches a good style of rugby, and manages to improve average players the most out of any coach in SL. Whether that’s enough to win finals remains to be seen.

I'd also be for a trial of limiting the players who can get involved in a tackle to 2.

2 referees will help a lot imo

Wouldn't like this. Always enjoy seeing gang tackles and players clattered into touch or in goal. Also, before you know it we'd have refs giving penalties as soon as a 3rd player laid a finger on the carrier, regardless of whether they were playing an effective part of the tackle.

For me is hard to police any way around. Now the players are fitter, two or three man tackles and a wrestle on the floor is the norm. Given that, if the onus was on the ball carrier to look after the ball, we'd have turn overs every set.

Like Kaeru Jims suggestion.

Agree, but we would need to double the size of the first grade ref pool. Not sure that can be done in short order

We've already got 2 refs, one of them is called a video ref. He has several views of any tackle situation and could quickly intervene if the onfield ref gets it wrong. I also think the touch judges should do more to help the ref regarding offsides, forward passes, knock on etc.

I honestly think prevention is better than cure. We need to make the rules simpler and easier to enforce (and get right), and MINIMISE the number of judgement calls officials need to make.

One referee is sufficient if the players are incentivised correctly. i.e. if there is no competitive advantage to be gained from an action, they will stop doing it.

one ref didntbsee 3 sneaky ball steals by mcshane. 2 refs would

Not definitely. But if he doesn’t see the need to try that tactic in the first place we can get on with the game without 2 referees or a stoppage and penalty/scrum.

But people will always try to get an advantage either inside or outside of the rules - it's like diving in football. You can't bank on people playing lawfully so you need to regulate to counteract it. Either two refs or use the video ref more, as others have suggested - there are natural delays in the game anyway so it shouldn't impact overly.

As a suggestion how about the sport is great leave it alone.

Refs are already doubling up on weekends cos we dont have enough so 2 refs is virtually an impossibility and as for using video ref more pfffft you must be having a laugh surely?

Let's just accept refs cant see thru bodies, are human, will make mistakes just like players and coaches do.

Fans worry too much about referees.

The ruck is a mess and has been for a while.

The game needs to reach out to new audiences and I don’t think we can afford to have these obvious frustrating aspects to the game.

Ball security in the tackle and ruck is a bit of a lottery; most calls seem 50/50 because it’s very difficult to establish intent with three or four blokes wrestling.

There are also too many stoppages around this issue.

We might never get it perfect but it is a clear area where the game could be working better IMO.

Rugby Union's rucks are s hell of a mess compared to our 3 men tackles and nobody moans about them impacting viewing figures. The average non RL fan doesn't turn off or not watch cos the rucks are a mess.

The game has never been faster or more competitive.

People complain about the wrestling in the game but that is now part of the game and is a much worked on and is now a skill in the sport.

The only way to sort any ruck issues and wrestling techniques is to play touch and pass. Now for a long part of this season weve looked like we was playing touch and pass on our own tryline but do we really want to go there.

The sport is fine its fast the games are competitive, its physical and its played by great athletes. Let's praise the sport for once.