The long miss out pass to the winger looks spectacular, but is it me, most of them look forward to me?

Barry McDermott aluded to this on Boots N All last night. In my younger days one difference between League and Union was the forward pass was rarely got away with in league. Now it is a plague of the game.

It seems the referee relies more on the position of the passers hands. I do have sympathy with the linesmen that I am judging from a stationary position (and I agree - not always in direct line) but the linesman can be running at full speed when trying to judge.

It is why I would always put away supporters at the ends of grounds, so offsides and forward passes by the home team are impossible to complain about.

In a game where the difference between winning and losing is only small things now - I believe the forward pass is spoiling it. I dont believe both of Wigan's late tries against us were legal as the best recent example.

What's your view on contested scrums?

Hands, it's all about the hands.

Contested scrums - good question. Having watched Union recently spend 5 scrums trying to sort out possesion I have come to the conclusion that they take too long to get right. It is a sad loss to the game because scrummaging is a great skill but on the counter side the ball is in play on average 58 mins in league and because of the technicalities of the game only 28 mins in union.....I'd rather watch rugby and if that means a scrum is just a means of restarting the game with half the players gathered together in one position and thats all then OK

the scrum isn't the problem, it's the T- P- E that is causing the problem.

I agree.

I'm not a fan of contested scrums in RL because they would slow the game down at the expense of the rest of the game which i'd rather be watching

I quite miss shouting "FEEEEDINGGGG" at ever scrum though. Still do it occasionally for nostalgia's sake.

My argument is why don't we try it more often? If you can’t rely on the ref to get the decision then do it yourselves! Richard Myler and Sean O'Loughlin do the old forward pass in every game. As long as you make the ball go high and on a looping trajectory, you seem to be able to get away with it.

we're not good at catching those, unfortunately.

Spot on, that's what ref's are told to look out for.

We're no good at throwing them either!

'part from that, top idea!

I agree

....I loved contested scrums, I know a hooker who has battle scars all over his head it was a brutal affair



But has been mentioned no place for them in the modern game

Was never forward but how good was Sinfields pass against Wakefield.

Awesome. Copied Danny Ward's

I agree with you about forward passes my tin-clad friend. They are ruining the game as officials continue to turn a blind eye to them on a regular basis. I would like to see the video ref rule on them - it might mean a few tries disallowed that weren't forward but more errors would be caught than would be made in my view.

I don't think there are that many forward passes that go undetected (though there are some). It's just that many fans assume that if a ball travels forward relative to the point where it was passed, it is always forward pass.

Which as you rightly point out is a wrong assumption. Another wrong assumption that if the passer passes the ball forward but runs like hell to get in front of the receiver before he catches it then 'momentum' means the pass can't be forward.

Indeed - that one is Stevo's fault. But if the player throws a ball in a backwards direction, but their own forward momentum at the time of passing carries the ball forward relative to where it was passed, the pass is still backwards. This is the mistake a lot of people make: they see where the ball was passed, and where it was received, put two and two together and come up with five.

In this day and age, would it not be possible to have a microchip inside the ball or some way of tracking the ball that would alert the official immediately if the ball was forward? If someone could develop a system that could do this accurately, I think they could make a bit of money. Surely there is a way of doing this already. Look at how opta track players to measure distance covered etc.

No, because it isn't the flight of the ball that indicates it's forward, as has alread been stated.

No doubt about that. My point about the video ref being used would prevent tries like the first Wigan one against us at their place and also the debacle the other week at Leeds - and no doubt a number we've scored that shouldn't have been allowed in the past. I think it would be beneficial to use it. If the technology could be improved to draw a line 'through' the hands of the passing player (perpendicular to the touch lines) and move that line forward at the same rate the player was moving forward after ball release then so much the better but that might be a bit too much of an ask. If that was possible then as long as the ball never crossed in front of the line on its way to the receiver then the pass would be legal. Might be difficult to use for short passes mind but as the OP said it's the long balls to wingers that are being missed the most. I'd still use the technology as it stands now to catch the farcical ones like the two I mentioned.

But what about instances where the passer is hit just after he passes? Their momentum would stop dead, but the ball would still be affected by the forward momentum they had before the impact. To me, if the position of the hands is what the refs look at, this should be fairly easy to judge on a video replay.

so are you saying the linesman has no input into forward passes? cos it hasnt anything to do with the flight of the ball?

[pedantThere are no linesmen in RL.[/pedant

The instructions to the Touch Judges can vary from ref to ref. They don't [ihave[/i to be involved in anything beyond judging touch, as their name suggests. In any case, the TJ can still have an input into forward passes without relying on the flight of the ball in the same way as the ref can.