Rugby league great Brett Finch has unloaded on ARLC chairman Peter V’Landys over the NRL’s recent crackdown on head-high tackles in the game.
As of Monday afternoon, 20 weeks’ worth of suspensions had been handed out by the MRC following the NRL’s Magic Round, with five players yet to enter a plea.
Watch Finch’s fiery argument in the video above
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Those suspensions are the result of three send-offs and 14 sin-bins from the NRL’s showpiece weekend of footy in Brisbane.
According to Finch the NRL has shot itself in the foot with its mission to eradicate the game of foul play.
The former Origin star explained that by consistently sending players from the field, the NRL was only adding to fatigue in the game which results in more accidental high contact.
“By speeding the game up there’s going to be more fatigue,” Finch told the Bloke In A Bar podcast.
“With more fatigue comes errors. That’s in terms of with the ball, that’s in terms of missed tackles, that’s in terms of tackles that can go wrong or poor technique that can create high tackles.
“Now the crazy thing about this is, he (V’landys) wants to nullify it, so he’s going to sin bin people and send people off. Guess what that’s going to create? More fatigue.
“There’s going to be less people on the field. They’re going to have to work harder.
“More fatigue. Bigger score blow outs. It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t know what he’s doing!
“He’s trying to patch things up on the run. He’s just creating bigger problems.
“I don’t want to sound like a player saying, ‘back in my day…’. But this is not the same game I grew up watching.
“It’s not the game I played. There was one close game on the weekend. Other games were over after 10 minutes.
Finch wasn’t done there, taking aim at the NRL’s new rules to speed up the game and highlighting their role in creating consistently lopsided scorelines.
“If I’m paying my hard-earned to fly up there with the family and watch one game that went down to the wire… it’s robbing the fans of good footy and I just think we’re way off the mark with this,” he said.
“We’ve got problems now as a game. There’s 40 points consistently scored every game. There’s literally no defence because of these new rules.”
NRL blames players for charges
Meanwhile, the NRL has launched a passionate defence of its crackdown with head of football Graham Annesley declaring players are to blame after a record 24 charges by the match review committee.
According to Annesley, they’re charges that would have been handed out in any week, regardless of the NRL’s new stance on tougher on-field punishment for contact with the head or neck.
Annesley said the record number of charges, which almost doubled last week’s 22-year record of 14, is because dangerous contact is happening more often.
“People have said that Magic Round was wrecked because of what the referees did,” he said.
“Magic Round was impacted because of what the players did.
“Referees responded to that. “If these incidents don’t happen, no one is complaining about the referees taking action because there’s no action to take. It’s disappointing.”
However, he could not explain why incidents of foul play and dangerous contact happened more in round 10 than at any other weekend in NRL history.
Annesley said there is not yet enough data to judge whether rule changes brought in at the start of the season have fatigued players to the point where tackle technique is affected.
“I’m hoping it’s just one of those unusual spikes that we have in any season ... but this is a big number, obviously,” he said.
“I’m hoping it’s a spike that can’t be explained, and then next week it comes back down again.
“It’s unfortunate that it happened on Magic Round, it’s unfortunate that it happened on the weekend where the Commission said we’re going to take a much tougher view of this stuff on the field, but off the field nothing changed.
“Off the field they were reviewed as they would be any other week.”
As for the edict to referees to be tougher on contact with the head and neck, Annesley said the NRL simply had to catch up to every other contact sport in the world that is taking concussion seriously.
The RLPA is set to meet with the NRL about the crackdown this week.
General president Daly Cherry-Evans said he supports the move to rid the game of high shots and a statement was made in the flurry of send-offs and sin-bins over the weekend.
“It’s great we’re cracking down on foul play, I think that’ll be good for the game, the longevity of it and enticing kids to play the game so I’m on board with what they’re trying to do there,” he said.
“The game has got the best interests at heart, I think the players understand that, but we’ve got to get the balancing act there.”
With AAP
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