Wallabies great reveals NRL star Nathan Cleary ‘keen’ on code switch

Surely we can all remember when this law didn’t exist though, people where doing all sorts, jumping up in the air basketball blocking style, diving full stretch with no hope in hell of catching the ball, and it actually made it extremely difficult to get the ball wide, past the man.

The two situations are miles apart, and the problem is just like all the other laws, WR think they can make them nice and tidy and they’ll then be definable by a ref on the field. They need to do some neuroscience on themselves.

It doesn’t matter where the line is, whether it’s intent to make a tackle and you just get in the road of the ball accidently or you just making it look like you weren’t trying to block the ball, or whether the lines is making an honest attempt to catch/knock it back, or you have no hope in hell.

So just make the law what you actually want it to achieve, don’t try and make the law fit some nice sized box because you just going to have the same problems but over even more continuous situations.

BA referenced this point in his post.

Maro has laready played 28 games and 2136 mins before even setting foot in Aussie so even if he only played the three Tests he’d be up around 2400 minutes and 30+ games.

While the French player welfare idea is laudable, the suggestion that their players play more than anyone else is clearly false.

What if the Lions decided to use the same criteria as France? The tour would be a non-event.

For instance Aaron Smith got penalized by Barnes for sticking his hand out in the RWC in France and the TMO intervened wanting the harsher punishment (as it appears that’s where WR has the refs moving towards again), even though both Barnes and the TMO said/worded the infringement the same it would appear Barnes seemed happy to accept he should have carded him.

I actually felt sorry for Barnes in that WC/Final, he seemed to have developed a good feel for the game and ref’d those situations perfectly but was overridden but the TMO on multiple occasions.

The trouble with the law is that this weeks does look similar to Villieres, but it’s entirely possible BB was playing the man instead of the ball (which you can’t say in Villieres case). In that A Smith case there was still traffic well out from the goalline, and in that Eben example it was more deliberate and only 5m out with an overlap (and if talking about that French game, they ruled that to have gone backwards so we don’t quite know what they would have done). That last situation had been when, for the last few years, a penalty would possible be upgraded to a card, not so much the Villiere (or Smith) example. But that’s obviously changed. Back to Beauden though, the real problem with the law (we can accept a YC as long as they are consistent) is that he could put his arm into that exact same position for ether action, tackle, or block, and the ref has no real way of knowing which. This extends to the development of certain ‘slapping’ tackle techniques, where a tacklers intent is mostly to stop the offload, and includes getting the arm in the path of the ball, whether still held by the attacker, or released by them. This action is no less illegal and deliberate in it’s intent than Ebens. It’s not even reactionary (not that you can be lenient in those situations) like Villieres. And it has the exact same effect on the game, whether its its clearly been passed to a team mate, or someone it’s trying to offload to a team mate, of removing skill/attacking play.

Actually another aspect of contention with the law is that it is now classed as foul play. It’s been referenced that in this weeks example the pass went forward, into Barrett, so his hand wasn’t even in the correct position to block a legitimate pass, but because they ruled his intent was to block it, now being “foul” play the forward pass is ignored. So you’ve got someone sent from the field blocking a pass that wasn’t even a pass.