Quote ="Dita's Slot Meter"As an admittedly traditional RL fan, who yearns for the days of a bit of biff and finds the modern game's offering very soft and quite dull to watch, can you explain how you are meant to tackle somebody without use of the shoulder?.. Surely, using the shoulder is the very basics that are shown to any child?
The whole issue of the BMM tackle is that English dips at the last moment - it is not a deliberate high shot, it's made that way by natural and unlucky circumstance.
Yes, we can debate BMM's technique and intention, but there's no proof of deliberate intent - who's not to say that his intention wasn't to wrap the arm around the oncoming prop on impact and put him on his back?'"
As a traditional RL fan who played at a decent amateur level in the early 70’s when there were still competitive scrums, I agree you were taught to use the shoulder when tackling someone around the legs and someone else to enter the tackle to stop an offload with his arms and bring the tackled player to ground.
If you watch the replay Masila leads with his shoulder, as I said in my original post it was an attempt to hit Matty English in the high body area and make him think about what would happen on his next run.
However as with a head high arm out tackle it’s fine if you get it right across the ball carrying area as intended but if you get it wrong and it causes injury say as with Chris Hills at Wigan its a sending off as should have been BMM’s. If ME dips it’s only slight and had BMM led with his arms not shoulder it would not have done anywhere near as much damage.
Interestingly enough Thaler called ‘play on’ when it was obvious Matty was ‘spark’ out but then stopped the game for Austin’s ‘kidology’ on the line when he deliberately tried to stop the game and succeeded as we scored. Very poor from Thaler.
As for your ‘grunt’ comment I was at the ‘battle of Fartown’ which ended up 10 v 10 Hudds v Wigan in the 70’s probably the dirtiest match ever played. It’s on You Tube if you care to take a look.
I miss the proper hard men of the game where giving out ‘tap’ was accepted, but it’s changed over the years not always for the better but not always for the worse. But the refs had no TV backup it was what they saw and a lot of hard players were good at blind siding them.
In this game Thaler and Hicks had technology on their side and failed miserably for that there is no excuse.
