I've now finally seen this tackle.

The suspension is a terrible decision. It was a tackle. A tackle which began round the waist and was actually quite a low impact. It's the sort of tackle which might happen a dozen times in every match. Calling it a name like "leg whip" tackle doesn't make it any kind of tackle with an intention to injure.

We play a collision sport. Injuries happen. They're perhaps more likely to happen when more tacklers are involved because it becomes impossible to fully control where pressure occurs on limbs as the tackle goes to ground.

Boudebza has been very badly done to here. I hate to say it, but given the way so much of RL works, it would surprise me not at all if Boudebza's nationality had more to do with this decision than the actual tackle.

Dreadful decision. Dreadful.

Interesting point. If it had been Roby I wonder if anything more would've happened at all?

Already in the Salford/saints game there has been a tackle exactly the same as French johns tackle on shenton. Same method, two up, one on legs. No injury, player was straight up and played the ball. Hope the number 13 for Salford gets 4 matches.........

Except that he missed the cup game the following week.

i am assuming the panel must have had additional footage that has not been publicly released. Both teams will have filmed the game, so it is conceivable that this footage is clearer that the Sky footage.
As for the panel being influenced by the comments of a coach - I think that's a bit far fetched. Those who sit on these panels are not the type to be influenced.

Is Cummings on something?

He can't be seriously suggesting there was anything wrong with that tackle on Percival?!! The game will be done away with the way things are going.

Here's hoping Percival is ok by the way.

Well we've just seen a similar tackle from a Salford player on Percival. He's gone off injured. 4 games anyone??

When looking for an explanation for a leftfield decision, it was one possibility that occurred to me, and I've been including it as a caveat. But surely somebody would have mentioned it by now, wouldn't they?

Too many people in this sport want it to become touch rugby and do away with the collision and tackle and wrestle aspects of the sport. It's doing my head in.

Cummings in commentary then was just embarrassing. Claiming that the Salford lad was waiting round the back and hanging on in the tackle...what's he supposed to do, let go and let the Saints lad run up the other end of the pitch?

Injuries happen, sometimes they're as a result of foul play but we've not seen that yet this season from anyone.

There's 2 cameras and the option to zoom either camera in with simple editing if they wanted to do that too. Just like the "super zoom" Sky use.

The stitch up stuff/they don't like our club! stuff is just the usual spouted by every teams fans when someone cops a ban, doesn't matter which team it is someone always cries foul...HKR are not being painted in a good light with the coordinated effort by Hudgell & Campese to demean the governing body and bring the game into disrepute. They should try being the bigger men and move on.

Also, technically they aren't saying he broke any rules he was just negligent and was the cause of the injury albeit unintentionally:


Which I think everyone should be able to agree with?

Looks like we'll have a few more 4 game bans handed out after this weeks matches. Tackle on Percival no different to Boudebza's and again not malicious. Consistancy has to be applied however.

Hmmm is this a new tackle technique though. I saw a few similar late last season and now a few in the first couple of games.
The one in the Salford v Saints game looked, admittedly on 1 viewing, like a deliberate technique of using the body on the back of the legs in order to bring him down. Now before people get worked up I'm not suggesting the technique is deliberately designed to injure. It's probably to try and pull the player back rather than the tackler sliding down his legs because that allows a quick play the ball.

Maybe I'm wrong but it's the technique looks similar to others I've seen recently.

The problem with all these injuries is how you define it as an offense in a clear enough way to make it functional and clear as a ruling.

My personal take on it is that it should be illegal to tackle the legs when a player's upper body is held. There is no safe tackle when the upper body is clamped and you remove the legs. The defenders holding you are naturally fighting to push you back, the tackler joining from the rear of the ball carrier usually forces the legs to collapse in the natural direction of the knee and it's then a lottery whether the holding players can deliver the player to the floor without trapping one of his legs. Incredibly easy to do maliciously and get away with it, also incredibly easy to do accidentally. Seriously knee and ankle injuries aren't rare these days and they need to look at it, not that I think any of the tackles seen recently were malicious in anyway.

We need to get a grip fast. A meeting of coaches and RFL to ensure that this doesn't spiral out of control.

It's one thing to stop people from charging in at the side of a stationary man's knee, with the intention of breaking his leg. But you can't ban tackles around the legs, and you absolutely can't hold people responsible for how people fall in a tackle. In a tackle, you have two guys of 15 stone moving at speed into a collision. One is intending to avoid being brought to ground and the other is intending to bring him to ground. In that situation, neither has full control of what happens, which is why we have both completed tackles and tackle busts. Occasionally, tackles will result in awkward falls which put pressure on limbs and joints and bones which they can't sustain, and an injury occurs. That is as much a part of rugby league as the posts and the grass. We can't penalise tackles which happen to result in injury, because it would literally be the end of our game as we know it.

Tonight, Percival was trying to crab sideways away from one incoming tackler, in order to retain his feet. The tackler nevertheless managed to get hold of him just as a second tackler arrived. Unfortunately, Percival's slightly splayed legs folded underneath one of the tacklers, and it caused injury. That was absolutely not the tackler's "fault", but an unfortunate consequence of a perfectly legal tackle.

The decision on Boudebza has opened a huge can of worms, and the very few heads in the game which actually have brains inside them need to quickly move to stop this spiralling into something which will change our sport into something very different.

It already is. Any tackler adding to the tackle after the referee has called held - whether high or low - is committing an offence. Percy tonight wasn't held, though. He was clearly trying to continue to make ground and evade the tackle. You can't have a rule which states that tacklers aren't allowed to try and tackle the legs of a man who is still moving. That would be an end to all cover tackles, all chase-down tackles, and all small players in RL. Rob Burrow, Luke Robinson et al have no place in a game in which tacklers are not allowed around the legs.

I'd also argue that it's no safer to have a position where, because leg tackles aren't allowed, you end up instead of having 1 up top and 1 down below, with having 3 tacklers up top, driving the carrier backwards to end up underneath.

We're being misled here by the tendency to talk about our game as if everything in it can be controlled like it's happening at half pace on a training field. I played for 15 years, and have coached on and off for 10. You can practice to do lovely textbook tackles on the training paddock, but when games happen at full speed, with aggressive competition and split-second decisions, the majority of tackles are a long way from being controlled. They're often simply self-sacrificing collisions, and none of the participants has any real control over how that's going to work out. That's the very essence of our game. There will be injuries in tackles. There always have been, and there always will be. You cannot remove those from the game without removing the collision itself. In which case we have tag rugby, which is not what I'd pay to watch, myself.

It looks similar to the old "ninja" tackle that Rob Parker used a lot, just they've moved the point of contact up a bit from the calf to the knee.

On its own in a one on one tackle it's probably fine 99% of the time but throw in the ball carrier being held up by defenders before the "low" contact and heavy pitches...that's when it becomes unsafe.

4 match ban for Walne or Boudebza's ban is rescinded. If not, everyone in the game should be questioning the competence of the RFL's disciplinary committee.

I understand entirely what Roy Haggerty means and agree with most of what he says, I'm just naturally suspicious of both players and coaches. We know that they spend huge amounts of time and effort on tackle technique that is designed to slow the play the ball. And we know that they've developed such techniques that are designed to slow the play the ball BY hurting the player. Whether it's chicken wings, cannonballs, as Gronk! says the old "ninja" tackle or I can remember a period not that long ago where the calves of players would be stood or knelt on and last season we had a few incidents of stamping/standing on players hands.
So whilst I'm always willing to accept that, as Roy says, it's a fast, chaotic game and things can happen. I also think we should be vigilant for such trained techniques and eliminate them whenever we see them.
Accidents I'll accept. Trained techniques I won't.

I completely disagree. It will spiral out of control if that happens.

I think everyone needs to say that the Boudebza ban was wrong and we should move on and not ask for similar bans for similar tackles. The sport would become a joke if that happened.

ok then, that fortnight

was a bad one that, remember seeing it at the time and wincing.

First Utility Touch and Tag Rugby League... Doesn't have the same ring to it.

That'd be demeaning the same governing body you expected to 'cop out'?

Hudgell has made specific claims about pretty serious breaches of process. If they're untrue then Hull KR will look bad. If they're true then the governing body is generating its own disrepute.

I doubt you'll build much consensus around that statement saying JB acted against the spirit of the game, unless new footage emerges.

Nail on the head; and I share your suspicion of coaches and players. There is a mountain of evidence that tackle techniques are constantly evolving to 'win' the ruck, and the latest incarnation is the first man in going high and holding the attacker up, so that others can join one by one and chop him to pieces, turning him over in the process so he ends up on his back, with his head towards his own sticks - they then peel off one by one, which takes the longest possible time. That's considered a defensive 'win' from a coaching perspective, but I'm sure it's not what the rules intended.

I'm not at all in favour of removing collision or risk from the game - but I am in favour of removing the ability of coaches to play fast and loose with the rules to the detriment of player welfare and the spectacle.

In that case we should have a dozen players up every week. What I think will happen is that the RFL will quietly move on without doing this again, leaving us without any no 9's for a month.

Quick question re 'leg whip'.
Does anyone else hear Family Guy's Stewie's voice when they read it?
Leg hwhip. It's a leg hwhip, Brian.