Wednesday 9 March 2016 15:40, UK
I have wanted to write an open letter to the laws committee since I saw a game in round one when a player took advantage of a rule that I think needs to change.
It felt wrong however, to be complaining about rules in the first week of the season so I kept it in the back of my mind since then. It's something that has both annoyed and frustrated me for a few years and I think needs to be changed.
Here is my attempt to justify why.
Section 9, Law 1 of the game states that "the ball is in touch when it, or a player in contact with it touches the touch line or any object on or outside the touch line……"
We see some brilliant tactical kicks which roll into the in-goal area and are about to stop just short of the dead ball line, but are artificially taken over the line by a defender who puts one foot out of play and then makes contact with the ball while it is still moving.
There are kick-offs which would naturally land in the in-goal area, but are falsely taken out of play when the catcher does the splits and touches the ball before it lands in the in-goal area. Penalty to the defending team.
It seems to me that we are penalising skilful kicks by a rule that needs to be modified. I understand the history behind why it was introduced but don't believe that it benefits the sport in its current form.
It just doesn't make sense to the general sports fan to reward the action of doing this. Sport should reward skilful play, surely that's the whole point.
It appears as though in our attempt to speed up the game we have thrown the rule book in the recycling bin.
We need to re-write the rules so that a player cannot deliberately make himself/herself in touch or in goal by stepping out before touching the ball.
With this article in my head, I then sat down to watch all six games of Super League action and I began to question if my article was really that important. I watched eight hours of rugby league and wondered where we are heading with the rules.
It appears as though in our attempt to speed up the game we have thrown the rule book in the recycling bin. Why worry about my rule amendment when so many other rules are ignored? This isn't a sudden shift in officiating, it has been going on for over 20 years, but we are getting to the stage of no return.
I have a retired friend who played and coached at the highest level. Graham Starkey is an intelligent man who loves all sports, but rugby league is his No 1 game. On Monday morning he wrote to me questioning the credibility of the sport.
His biggest disappointment is that we now pick and choose when to apply the rules. He was highly critical of the fact that we have almost got to the stage of "anything goes".
I'm not sure who was responsible for the relaxing of the rules. Perhaps the referees felt under pressure to keep the penalty count as low as possible.
Journalists sometimes claim that it has been a great game because we have only had six penalties in the match, so referees used this as a target. The referees with higher penalty counts were castigated in the media and as a result failed to get the bigger games. Surely the referee's job is to apply the rules, not ignore them.
We have now regressed to a point in which players are assisted by the referees when they don't have enough of their team in a scrum. In the old days that was a penalty, but not any longer. It looks and sounds like a junior match where some of the players don't know the rules.
Some people have suggested to me that it all began when we ignored the play-the-ball rule which states that the player must touch the ball with his foot. Once we ignored one major rule, the rest quickly tumbled behind it.
So, what began as a minor suggestion to the men who currently govern the laws of the game, has grown into a plan to save it.
I don't have all the answers, in fact I don't even have all the questions, but I do have one question. What are you doing to save the sport's credibility?
Let's play to the rules.
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