I have picked up a bit from you in this debate, you are the 'voice of reason' at times. I accept that some/most of this is what league fans believe, so if I question it it is not directed at you.
He who sets the parameters wins the debate. Loig followers dismiss every aspect of the game EXCEPT when a player is running with ball in hand. Everything else, particularly the contests for possession, is deemed to be a stoppage.
Explains then why there are so few passes, gotta run with it in hand
But if we take this objection at face value, how then to explain their mute acceptance of five seconds of futile writhing on the ground every*single*tackle? Maybe they have changed the rules of league, but when I played the rule was you had to leave the tackled player immediately so he could play the ball. Perhaps it has been replaced by a time limit?
In any case, I have a very hard time marrying up that desire to the actuality
in their own game.
All that said, I can totally understand why potential fans are not exactly entranced by a game which can be won or lost by a referee deciding, arbitrarily, that one side's scrum is so much better that that team deserves to win the game. Particularly when most, if not all, referees, have never had their heads inside a scrum in the lives, and when most, if not all, referees are guessing as to what has happened in any given scrummage.
Again, i accept that may be how they feel, but dumbing down their game has had little effect on 'contentious ref decisions' has it. Heck, at least there is something to ref in the scrums!
Don't start me on rolling mauls. Or, rather, think about how to explain to a newcomer to the game just why tackling the ball-carrier is not allowed, just because a few blokes are lumbering forward with their hands on the bums of the blokes in front.
Well tbh I think this particular one is a pet peeve of yours rather than a league objection!
in any case, as a counter example, I love a good rolling maul! I can accept that you don't, tis all ok. But for me, it is yet another example of the splendid variation available to players in our game, not the group hug every five seconds in the other.
The thing is, referring to your scrum example, there WAS a time in league when the scrum, and the associated dark arts, was a valued part of their game. It was as fiercely contested, and as important to excel in, as it is in ours.
From memory, the reason it went was NOT due to some valued principle such as 'let's speed the game up and concentrate on running with ball in hand', it came about due to injuries which kept increasing.
So the solution was to get rid of it (yes, i know they have 'scrums'). So we had the ironic situation of highly paid professionals who could not get off their arse and practice at training the skills required to make scrums viable! I mean, they were professionals for god's sake, yet could not be bothered to practice what they were paid for? OTOH we had the amateurs who not only 'did they're day job' but did what was needed at training.
And they bang on about how tough league is against the powder puff union guys?? I'd put money on the womens rugby team in a head to head with the best league team to blow them off the park in a scrum. man, that would provide some right royal entertainment! (a bit like that guy who faced brett lee in the nets I'd imagine)
look at the uproar just recently when a scrum actually pushed! "you can't do that, someone will get hurt!' Yet these are the tough guys?
No wonder people are clamoring for 'bring back the biff' and 'bring back the shoulder charge', getting hugged by three guys each tackle is hardly the epitome of tough.
And on the ref at scrum time in our game, as i said at least there are things to ref. In league, the requirement is to play the ball, yet how many times a game is the ball not even played properly? It just get's stepped over. I mean such a simple thing like that that highly paid professionals you'd think were capable of doing, yet how many times does it get picked up by the refs??
No wonder they howl and scream with a scrum penalty, not only are there rules to be followed, the ref had the balls to pick them up on it. (the ref would cop a right talking to from the players if he did that in league i might add)
