not literally, of course.

J Tomkins on McGuire. I'm sorry, but should have been a straight red.

Ablett on S Tomkins in the game at HQ-straight red, easy.

Bailey should have gone for 10 2 weeks ago after the altercation with Radford.

There seems to be a great reluctance to get cards out, despite players repeatedly committing the offences.

So a congratulations to Mr Ian Smith for sending Radford off in what was a textbook red card offence.

I think some of our posters are doing is moaning about the rfl/refs etc.

Its getting boring dont y'know.

Sin-bin would of sufficed.



Perhaps, it was a clumsy challenge.



Definitely agree with that. His job was done and the subsequent song and dance routine deserved a sit down for 10 minutes.



The modern game is sickeningly clean so sending players off should be the option of absolute last resort, except in the rare extreme case where there is no doubting the severity of an offence.

Would you rather:

A) A player left on the field, put on report, later found guilty and banned.

or

B) A player sent off and found not guilty by the disciplinary committee.

It was the frequency of case B's that caused the RFL to bring in the on report system in the first place.

Yes definately let you lot off the hook as usual, do you lot own Red Hall too?
Buderus should be banned and Mcguire should be too for his proffesional foul at Wigan. maybe he got his comeuppance after all.

And maybe you got yours having to follow Hull FC. Your season is over - you may now leave!

II believe we'll see a penalty over the weekend awarded to the defending team with the ball carrier deliberately locking a tacklers arm, to prevent a release, hopefully against the cheat that is Tomkins.
Barry Mac even referred to during last nights games, and it won't have gone unnoticed at RFL HQ

More of the usual bollox from a "fan" of a tin pot club your lucky Leuaki hasn't been banned more this year for dangerous throws of course people like Brent Webb are his size the big pudding.
What was the label you gave some of your signings?
Oh yes the "Tongan Mafia"

I'll take this as you been upset your out of the play offs. But reading between the lines you are suggesting McGuire deserved to get injured for what he did, bravo

Well there was a female touch judge for the U20s match prior to the Catalan game the other week.

Slightly O/T, but for a truly bizarre Thierry Alibert experience, search for

Workshop Taijiquan Oude Yangstijl met Thierry Alibert

on that well-known video sharing website

I will hold my hand up and say I am very guilty of this, but its for a reason.

We are not in the 60's and 70's where 'Biff' was seen not just as a part of the game but actually desired by many. Like everything else, RL has moved on. The game is quicker, far more about skill than Biff (though force is still important). The modern day fan would prefer to see a 'relatively' clean game that show cased the players skills. Seeing someone like Radford, for example, standing over a downed player and thumping him in the head is the mark of a moron and should not have a place in the modern game.

So you say these conversations are getting boring. Maybe, but until the RFL start taking appropriate action to stamp out this behaviour (though it will never totally go) these threads will always appear - and rightly so.

Always a delight to hear from a true fan of the 'game'. We do so love to see RL players getting serious injuries.

Eejit.

I can only assume you never saw the game and how it was played in the 60's and 70's, if you did I'm surprised you're making such clueless remarks.

Yes the game was tough and physical and a little underhand back then but skillwise it was in a completely different league to the robots marching up and down the field that characterises the modern game.



Great example. What makes you think that had a place in the game in the 60's and 70's either. It didn't just as it doesn't today which might explain why Jim Mills and John Burke got sent off around 18 times each in their careers and Lee Radford got sent off in Round 27.

With all due respect, b*llocks.

There's possible an argument for half-backs being more creative in that era than they are now (albeit their cause was helped by the fact that the defensive line speed and organisation was so poor in the semi-pro days), but are you seriously trying to tell me that the likes of Graham Eccles were more skilful ball in hand than their modern day equivalents (JJB, Lauitiiiti)?

I'd say today's 2nd rowers are, in general, more skilled. The argument's closer if you apply it to loose forwards.

I respect your opinion but disagree with it.

We can all pick on individual instances to illustrate our point of view. Why pick out a player (Eccles) who while great at what he did was not noted for his ball handling skill to compare to one (Lauitiiti) who is noted for that one aspect and little else and is one of the very few exceptions in SL rather than the norm?

It wasn't just in the halves, although Murphy, Millward, Nash, Seabourne, Shoebottom, Hardisty, Hepworth, Topliss, Holmes would all destroy the competition if they were around in today's SL and they were all British.

The centres were more skilfull, the wingers appeared faster, every team seemed to have a ball playing loose forward and often a ball playing prop as well. The 5 yard rule demanded players were skillful as just using brawn was never enough. Nowadays it's more or less all brawn from 1 to 13 (except in the halves), five drives and a kick. Boring and at International level totally inadequate.

Nowadays James Graham passes a ball and everyone swoons like it's something incredible they've just witnessed.

The tackle technique was also appalling, the players in general were slower, not as fit which made everything else much easier

Centres may have been more skilfull, but they werent close to having the physical attributes, the mix of size, strength and speed as a player Keith Senior, regardless of how skilfull they were, Physically they would have been dominated and would never have had the opportunity to showcase those skills.

Whilst the halfbacks may look less creative now, what they are doing, they are doing at 10 times the speed the game used to be, speeds at which the players you have listed wouldnt be able to cope with.

I'm glad you agree as it was a question of the skills within the game rather than a comparison between the fitness levels of part-time, semi pros able to train two evenings a week and a game of full time athletes.

Maybe i wasnt clear,

What i am saying is that the skills shown today are performed at a much higher level, the game as a whole is stronger and as such showing those skills is much more difficult.

It isnt a case of the modern players not having these skills, simply that they cant express them because the defensive technique and the physical fitness is so much better.

Its much easier for a halfback to create gaps in a tired defence, if the defence tires quicker they will have more opportunities, modern defences tire less so there are less opportunities to create gaps, so it becomes a harder skill to create a gap and as such less prevelant which can give the impression that players lack those skills when that isnt the case, it is simply defences(through fitness and technique) are better at stopping them.

The main difference between 70s and now in terms of skills is that the modern players' skills are largely taught by coaches. In contrast, those of the 70s' players were self-developed to a greater extent. On the one hand, this means that the amount of errors made by current players is a tiny fraction of the number made by their 70s counterparts. The downside is that many of the modern players lack the originality and creativity of those from way back, having effectively been taught exactly how to play.

I believe a similar effect has been observed in snooker where players such as Alex Higgins have been superceded by a generation of coached players of a much higher standard, albeit lacking in the idiosyncracies and unpredictability of their predecessors.

Erm, don't you get all prissy with me when I address other posters in such a dismissive, forthright manner? Now who is being all "look at me, I'm the big dong of the forum"?

Back OT, I agree with TVOC. I recently had a romantic evening with Bullseye. before I drugged and violated him we watched some rugby DVDs from 1990-1994. The game was harder, and dirtier. The players were smaller and less athletic. However, the skills on display were far better than we see these days.

IMHO of course. I do hope you don't verbally abuse me for expressing it. I might weep.

Its always very dangerous to compare old players with new, the game is so very different. The players in the 60's etc would simply get monstered today. Why? Because as I said, the game has moved on. I could launching into a great spiel about evolving fitness and nutrional advice etc... but people get it - sports people are fitter these days, and stronger, and faster. Skill is different, but without the rest its largely irrelevant.

The point of the thread is about ref's and what Im saying is that the days of biff should be long behind us but due to a lack on conviction by on field refs and then the review panel its not. Stronger refs and discipline would allow players to get on with playing the game. Thats the point - not how old I am or how many times a player got sent off in decades gone by.

The biff will never be behind us IMO, purely because tempers will always be lost for as long as the game enjoys its current physicality.

when you are comparing 2 different eras of the game you have to take into account law changes and fitness improvements amongst other things
theres no doubting todays players are bigger,stronger and faster than players from the 70s but i dont think todays players could play the modern game up to 4 days a week as they did back then
those players were made fit for that eras game and every player knew how to exploit what looked huge gaps compared to todays game where speed is paramount

A few things I remember from that evening before Gareth's Rohipnol kicked in was that the games from the early 90s were surprisingly fast, and pretty much as quick if not quicker than SL games now. The PTB was much quicker and there was less of an obsession with the ruck area. Teams lined up much deeper and had a greater variety of set moves with the ball often being switched or using runners running imaginative lines. It was a world away from SL where we see all the teams using the same dull set move.

At Division 1 level there's no doubt that defences were looked less organised at times but teams had to use skill to break them down rather than brawn. There's no doubt that kicking skills were better with players able to kick the ball further and make it stand up in goal more easily. At test level with defences more organised you'd expect a more sterile game but that wasn't the case. I think the game nowadays has gone from being skill orientated to brawn orientated, largely due to the introduction of the 10m rule. It's easier to train a big athlete to get a quick PTB and win a penalty than to coach skills. That is gradually changing but when you look at the lack of skilful British players in the game over the past 10/15 years you have to wonder about how the game has developed and what coaches have done.

The other thing that struck me was that just about every other play the ball back then would be penalised for foul play now. There was a sly dig in almost every tackle yet this very rarely led to a reaction from the player, ref or crowd. It seems over time we've become used to seeing less and less of this so now a player like Bailey gets a heap of attention for what would be nothing at all 20 years ago. While this may be fine in the hyper sensitive and PC world we live in it's far less entertaining.