Captain Hook wrote:
Or players eventually realise there is no hiding place and start behaving accordingly? This is the part that Saddened doesn’t seem to comprehend, some of their players are serial offenders and therefore are punished more severely.
They are playing professional rugby league. Things will happen. It's not possible to be entirely well behaved, players slip, players get fatigued, players step and change their height quickly. Fouls happen and will happen no matter how harshly you punish them. People get high tackles and late hits in touch rugby, there is defintely not an issue with player behaviour generally in Super League.
The dig at Saints simply isn't true either. Saints are more no indisciplined than any other side in Super League. We get more bans because we get more bans, nothing else. Look at Huddersfield, one ban all season. Seven cards, two for blatant cannonball tackles, one red for a blatant strike to the face with an elbow, no bans. They don't get any bans and will always have a fantastic record, because they never ban them, they don't even charge them for cannonball tackles they got carded for
. They commit as many high tackles, crushers, cannonballs, strikes as any team in Super League. Bevan French is an interesting one too. Two grade B charges for the same thing within two months and no ban, how does that happen? Were Salford really four times more indisciplined against Wigan than Huddersfield have been all season?
It's causing a noticable impact to the quality of the product on the field. No other sport bans it's players for such minor nonsense as we do. It can't be blamed on the court case either, some of the stuff they are banning players for wouldn't even get given as a penalty on the field and doesn't impact the head. They've just gone way too far with it and created the trial by social media farce we get every week now. The RFL acknowledged the impact of banning players on the quality of the product themselves at the start of the season. They were supposed to be moving to a system where minor bans were largely replaced with fines. The MRP hasn't worked and it needs to be replaced with one that reflects a similar stance to the one the referees take. There were no bad incidents this round and no red cards. The MRP thinks there should have been seven red cards this week. And you don't think there's a problem with the MRP?