Can't remember the Gardner incident or how close he was to making contact with the head, but IMO Child got the Taylor one right.

It was late, but he at least bent his back and made an effort not to hit O'Brien in the head, unlike the Bailey one that was referred to earlier in the thread.

You, or anyone, can read the RFl rulings, this one explains:

Incident considered Dangerous tackle in 55th minute (O’Brien)
Decision No charge
Details of Charge / Reason for NF Player uses illegal shoulder charge however contact is shoulder to shoulder and impact from collision with teammate contributes to result of tackle. Penalty Sufficient.

Hint: the phrase "dangerous contact" is not used.

Obviously, your use of the word "caused" is disingenuous as you well know that after the shoulder charge, the head was accidentally whipped into contact with a team-mate's arm, and this looked to KO the poor lad which then "caused" it to be compounded by cracking his head on the deck as he went down.

If you want to be pedantic then you could use "caused" in this context for that series of events, but it was hardly predictable that he would be knocked out by an impact with a teammate's arm, and so it would be ludicrous to discipline him for what was a pure accident.

having watched it back, I am still unsure why a penalty was given against Paul Clough when Hampshire dropped the high bomb, when he made no contact with the player at all.

Are you being serious? You don't think there is anything wrong with sticking your shoulder into someone's spine, that high and that late? The RFL's report is nonsense, shoulder on shoulder? The contact was square in the middle of O'Brien's back, with the contact (No matter what you claim) covering from between his shoulder blades up to the base of his skull.

If you are just blindly supporting the RFL's decision, explain to me how Gardner was banned? His was just a standard block tackle with the shoulder, yet he copped a charge and a ban. They called it a 'dangerous shoulder charge', yet you and they don't think what Taylor did was in any way dangerous?

Gardner's and Wilkin's shoulder charges in the same game were both to the head. Hence their bans. Shoulder charges per se, when they make contact with anywhere other than the head, are simply a penalty.

Taylor was reckless to make the tackle but the effects of it, which were mainly whiplash, were compounded by Wello getting in the way.

I felt sorry for O'Brien. He'd had a stormer of a game and we could have really done with him for later penalty kicking duties!

Farrell pushed into Clough and Clough then made contact with Hampshire but the referee didn't see Farrell pushing. However, it is clear on the TV replay. As former ref Cummings said at the time, Wigan were lucky to get away with that, particularly when it resulted in an extra point courtesy of Smith's drop goal.

If LMS hadn't illegally grabbed hold of Dudson's shirt when he was trying to make the tackle then there would be no need for 'wood chopping' as you put it.

There was no need for it at all and there never is. Dudson did it with a very determined attitude though and managed to attract the ref's attention so a penalty was justified purely for stupidity levels never mind the risk to LMS's arm.

There was nothing accidental about it. He illegally tackles O'Brien and it was only because of that illegal challenge he whips his head into a team-mate. Taylor should be culpable for the consequences of the tackle. So that is no excuse IMO.

If you punch someone (an offence in itself) and they wack their head on the pavement when falling over as a result of that punch, do you not think that they are responsible for that? Extreme example, I know.



Gardner's wasn't, hence the reason why I cited that particular example and not, for example, Wilkin's.

The annoying thing about that incident is it's something that I see happen every week and until last night had never seen it get penalised, He may have gone over the top but if someones going to grab your shirt I think you have every right to try and remove their hand off you. Although I would say Gill went a bit ott. Dudson was stupid enough to do it again not long after but nothing was given which really makes you wonder. At times I actually think the refs are just mentally flipping a coin that decides whether to penalise something or not.

Of course you do. But not by punching them. It's something that should always be penalised. In that situation the ball carrier should be able to hold the defender provided he doesn't offload the ball, as it's part of the competition for the tackle.

Don't agree with that - my view was that Dudson was trying to get back in the defensive line, but couldn't because he was being held.

Child got a hell of a lot wrong for both teams and was generally poor. The sin bin for green was ridiculous as he was not offside. Wigan are starting to show signs of last year and their young forwards arnt the same players as Easter time. Will take a big effort for them to win the gf, can't see it myself.

Whoah there, cowboy. Calm down.

Let's look at the contact of the head with his team-mates arm. What are the possibilities?
(a) it was accidental
(b) the tackler was reckless as to whether it would happen
(c) the tackler deliberately made it happen.
(d) it was an Act of God

We can immediately rule out (c) and (d).

To be reckless as to whether something may happen, it is necessary to know that there is a real risk it will happen, yet decide to ignore that risk. Now I have the feeling you may insist on disagreeing, but I don't think the tackler, or anyone, could reasonably have predicted even that the head would "whiplash" , much less that it would do so into a solid part of an other player in just such a way as to knock him out.

So plainly, it follows that the only reasonable conclusion is the injury was indeed (a) - an accident.


Your choice of phrasing is disingenuous, but I'm afraid you aren't getting away with it. You use the word "culpable", which means "deserving of blame". Therefore your proposition actually says:

But this is meaningless. I am either deserving of blame, or I am not. It is an either/or. There is no "should" about it.


How confused you are. Yes, it is reasonably foreseeable that if I punch somebody so hard that they fall to ground, they may hit their head on the pavement. So yes, in general I am probably responsible for that (though there are possible reasons why I might not be). But it is not what you mean to ask, is it? Your subtext, which we are supposed to instinctively divine, is "... and they wack (sic) their head on the pavement which causes death". I presume that must be what you want us to think, since a bump on the head would ordinarily be less significant than the original punch. That is a topic which is wholly irrelevant here as (a) no-one died (or was even significantly injured) and (b) manslaughter is a one-off topic all on its own, and is only so because of the obvious and irreconcileable conflict that exists between punishing a person for what they have actually done, not unintended consequences, on the one hand, yet marking the gravity of another person's death on the other hand. This is something that has exercised courts and judicial systems for centuries and still does. Rather than go off topic let me just point you to one article that you may like to read which summarises the issues:
[url=http://www.barristermagazine.com/archive-articles/issue-45/although-the-ministry-of-justice-has-spent-the-last-two-years-reviewing-homicide-law,-there-still-remains-a-serious-problem-around-%E2%80%9Cone-punch-killers%E2%80%9D-which-means-punishment-for-bad-luck.htmlOne punch killers[/url

In context, and keeping things in at least some proportion, a player is held to account for the consequences of what he did but, rightly, not for unintended and completely unforeseeable things which he neither did, noir intended, nor could remotely have foreseen.

And which is exactly the point made by the RFL disciplinary, which I quoted, above.

I think it was simply that Dudson went OTT which was the problem, in that he drew attention to himself. He didn't help his cause by then falling on to LMS with his knees, attracting Wello to the incident and therefore making even more of an issue of it. He could have won his team a penalty if he'd just stood there, arms open, pointing out what LMS was doing in holding on to him couldn't he? As I say, I think he was just a bit dumb.

Not that I mind, like, as it gave us another penalty!

that's an interesting link.

Do you rember Diao Powell that played centre for Halifax around 1998? Now, I hope I remember this correctly, but I'm pretty sure, whilst living and playing in Aus, he got into a disagreement and punched a guy, who fell awkwardly and died. Powell was, I think, not prosecuted for any crime.