CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Drama surrounding the NRL’s new high shot rules continues into Origin, as rugby league traditionalists demand that administrators backpedal on their decision to ban footballers from running as hard as they can into another footballer who is also running as hard as he can, and causing lifelong brain injuries as rotator cuff muscles clash with cheekbones.
Players do not oppose the new rules, however there has been vocal criticism of the heavy-handed punishments that accompany any slips in judgement – with some players banned for up to 4 weeks for high shots.
However, the league journos insist there is a mutiny taking place, and that this new wave of sensationalist stories have nothing to do with the pre-Origin lull in the news cycle that is usually remedied by the media’s racial vilification of Latrell Mitchell.
Aside from the coaches of teams that were never going to make the final eight taking the opportunity to blame these new rules for disrupting mid-season momentum, it is widely acknowledged that these new rules needed to be introduced to avoid a class action down the track involving the families of CTE-riddled players who took one too many head knocks.
That is, except for the bloodthirsty fans, who think that bans of head trauma is just another sign that the game has gone soft
As the rugby league commissioner Peter V’Landys and NRL CEO Andrew Abdo perservere with the new rules aimed at helping footballers remember where they left their car keys and wallet in twenty years time, fans are are unsurprisingly upset by the new changes.
“This is PC garbage” says local Broncos fan, Clayne Smeernoff (42), a logistics manager from Enoggera who uses the term ‘political correctness’ to describe anything that fills him with the haunting realisation that the world he knows is changing.
“This reminds me of when they banned closed fists from Origin”
Clayne is of course referring to the NRL’s 2014 decision to introduce a hardline stance on punching, after Paul Gallen nearly killed Nate Miles with a king hit in the 2013 State Of Origin.
“It’s part of the game. If people don’t like the game then they shouldn’t watch it!” says Clayne, in reference to the thousands of young mothers choosing to put their kids into AFL and soccer over rugby league, purely because they cannot stomach the unbridled violence that they see on their TV screens.
“All because of one or two coward punches and alluvasuden players can’t throw hands anymore”
“It’s the same thing. They are ruining the game. Have been for a while”
“First they banned [grievous bodily harm] and now they are banning [the type of tackles that would land a man in prison for a couple years if they did it to someone on the street]”
“Game’s gone soft!!”
