The shoulder charge revisited

[Browny]

And Milhouse cool ;)

 

[Anonymous person]

its rubbish because of the complete inability of the referees to correctly rule what is and isnt a shoulder charge, seemingly just ruling based on the effect it had on the ball carrier.

all they needed to do was make the suspension for a shoulder charge hitting someones head a set ban of say 4 weeks. the 12 or so that people are suggesting is ridiculous and way too heavy handed. 3-4 is the sweet spot IMO. long enough for people to think twice, short enough to not ruin a players whole season. banning the shoulder charge was just a knee-jerk reaction, and a dumb one at that.

 

[Porthoz]

Does it matter? Do you think rugby league players are capable of receiving the same blows as other similar sports while being completely immune to the usual damages?

Concussions are devastating to the human brain. It isn't like cartoons where their eyes roll around while stars circle their heads until they shake it off and are perfectly fine. A single concussion can be life changing...But of course who cares as long as we are entertained? The foundation of the game will crumble without shoulder charges and it makes the game too soft.

That is a false statement. A single concussion will not have any residual consequences in the future.
What is extremely dangerous is to suffer a second concussion while the brain is still going through the process of healing from the first. It's that healing process in the brain that makes it vulnerable to a subsequent concussion, and this is why a sports person should never be allowed to resume practice, much less competition, until the process is complete.

FTR, I am not a neurologist either, and I am also not handsome like Morkel, but I am informed!

 

[Coxy]

No, a knee jerk reaction would be to can it because the referees got a few rulings wrong.

 

[theshed]

That is a false statement. A single concussion will not have any residual consequences in the future.
What is extremely dangerous is to suffer a second concussion while the brain is still going through the process of healing from the first. It's that healing process in the brain that makes it vulnerable to a subsequent concussion, and this is why a sports person should never be allowed to resume practice, much less competition, until the process is complete.

FTR, I am not a neurologist either, and I am also not handsome like Morkel, but I am informed!

My point was, you don't need a career of bad head knocks to suffer damage. That a lone concussion can potentially be the catalyst for a poorer quality of life.

As for Morkel's point about concussions occurring when hitting the head on knees or hips. Some of that comes down to bad form, some is to blame on bad luck but the difference between a regular tackle and a shoulder charge is that a regular tackle is vital to the game. A shouldercharge is just a flashy and in my opinion lazy tackle technique. The fundamentals of the game don't change by removing it.

Its a contact sport and head injuries are going to occur, but I have no complaints about the NRL attempting to lesson the risk by removing an unnecessary defensive technique. Not to mention I'm stoked that I know longer have to see Gillett rushing out of the line only to miss a shoulder charge attempt 10 times a game. Now I only have to put with him rushing out of the line to miss regular tackles.

 

[Porthoz]

My point was, you don't need a career of bad head knocks to suffer damage. That a lone concussion can potentially be the catalyst for a poorer quality of life.

As for Morkel's point about concussions occurring when hitting the head on knees or hips. Some of that comes down to bad form, some is to blame on bad luck but the difference between a regular tackle and a shoulder charge is that a regular tackle is vital to the game. A shouldercharge is just a flashy and in my opinion lazy tackle technique. The fundamentals of the game don't change by removing it.

Its a contact sport and head injuries are going to occur, but I have no complaints about the NRL attempting to lesson the risk by removing an unnecessary defensive technique. Not to mention I'm stoked that I know longer have to see Gillett rushing out of the line only to miss a shoulder charge attempt 10 times a game. Now I only have to put with him rushing out of the line to miss regular tackles.

Once again, having several concussions is not a drama, as long as none of them occur when the brain is still recovering from a previous one. That is the main issue with concussion... People rushing back into their sport before they should!

As to the shoulder charge, using concussion as justification is a poor excuse for a knee jerk reaction by the game rulers. Like Morkel said, most concussions are caused by impact to the head in normal tackles, be it bad form or not...

 

[Anonymous person]

how many times has a player like dallas johnson or nate myles been concussed in their career? dozens. how many of those were from shoulder charges? not a single one that i can remember.

the banning of the shoulder charge was 100% a knee-jerk reaction to inglis destroying that saints guy. personally i saw nothing wrong with it on inglis' part. he didnt jump, he didnt intentionally go for his head, the guy just happened to slip at the last second from being tackled from behind. it was unlucky, and an accident. these things tend to happen when youre playing a sport where 13 players on the field all want to hit you as hard as they can when you have the ball.

 

[theshed]

Once again, having several concussions is not a drama, as long as none of them occur when the brain is still recovering from a previous one. That is the main issue with concussion... People rushing back into their sport before they should!

As to the shoulder charge, using concussion as justification is a poor excuse for a knee jerk reaction by the game rulers. Like Morkel said, most concussions are caused by impact to the head in normal tackles, be it bad form or not...

It seems a little like you've read a bit on concussions and are excited to share it. I like that, but understand we are agreeing on the facts. Though we appear to differ a little on the significance.

I do disagree with your second point shared with Morkal. As I said shouldercharge is unnecessary, normal tackles are not. We can't do away with them. And lets be honest, of course 'normal tackles' result in more injuries, and thats because they occur thousands of more times a year than the shoulder charge did. I don't have hard stats on this and if someone does and I'm wrong, my apologies, but I think percentage wise shouldercharges are the more dangerous.

I miss shoulderchargers and I miss fights but I don't disagree enough with the NRL, nor do I think they are important enough parts of the game, to want the rulings over turned.

 

[Nashy]

I agree with "theshed". The inconsistency and uncertainty in the application doesn't make the action to ban shoulder charges wrong. The whole point is about player protection. The rules need improvement and clarification, no doubt, but it's not a rule the NRL should backtrack on.

It has worked in junior rugby league for years. It just has some teething problems at senior level.

Without sounding like a bait, I'm interested to see how you differentiate this from wearing helmets on push bikes.

 

[Anonymous person]

just wait until a blatant non-shoulder-charge that is penalised costs a team a match. imagine if NSW lost a origin series because of it lol.............theyd change the rule quicker than the NSW team dump their winger marking boyd after a loss.

 

[theshed]

just wait until a blatant non-shoulder-charge that is penalised costs a team a match. imagine if NSW lost a origin series because of it lol.............theyd change the rule quicker than the NSW team dump their winger marking boyd after a loss.

The incompetency of officials doesn't highlight a bad rule as much as it highlights that we have incompetent officials.

 

[Coxy]

Without sounding like a bait, I'm interested to see how you differentiate this from wearing helmets on push bikes.

I don't even see the connection. Rugby league is a contact sport which by its very nature results in regular head contact, and most players have body-on-body contact at least 10 times a game, and the forwards as many as 50 or 60 times. Shoulder charges "gone wrong" are one of the least defensible tackles for a ball carrier to deal with. Ie, they have next to no chance of protecting themselves, while most other legitimate tackles there are methods they can avoid head contact most of the time (with the exception of accidental knees or head clashes as they're falling etc).

You can ride a bike for 20 years and never fall off, let alone hit your head.

That risk comparison is nonsensical.

 

[Porthoz]

More people will die/have complications as consequence of head trauma while riding a push bike than from a shoulder charge. See Coxy, I can take silly conclusions too! :001_tt2:

 

[Coxy]

Well there'd be no doubt more people suffer severe head injuries riding a bike each year than from playing rugby league. Many of them wearing helmets :P

But as you'd well know, risk assessment isn't just the severity of a risk occurring, but also the likelihood. Then it's a decision about what action you take - mitigation or contingency.

With the shoulder charges, the NRL has "assessed" that the potential severity of bad shoulder charges is severe, and that there's a significant enough likelihood of it occurring to outlaw them (mitigation). The contingency is to apply tough penalties should one occur despite the rule change (which also acts as a potential mitigation as a deterrent)

What some are contesting is that rather than mitigate by outlawing the tackle, simply make the penalties for a bad one severe.

The problem is, every player thinks they can make a shoulder charge safely. So if you simply say "we'll just punish the bad ones" players will think "oh well, no risk, I'm never going to stuff up"....

Hence if you outlaw it completely so every shoulder charge is at best a penalty, and we all know how significantly penalties influence a game, then that's a strong deterrent and thus mitigation.

Of course that doesn't completely rule out the risk of head injury, but it's one aspect controlled. And again, as is commonly brushed off, this is in line with junior grades. Most players come into the 20s and NRL having never played in a competition where shoulder charges were legal, which only heightens the risk that they'll be done poorly.

 

[Nashy]

How many people in Rugby League have taken a serious head injury because of a shoulder charge? How many bike riders have had a serious head injury for not wearing a helmet.

The risk is in both, and that's the connection. Fall off, hit the pavement with your head, bam, head injury.

It doesn't matter than RL is a contact sport, it actually shouldn't even come into the argument. Because your argument against wearing helmets for bikes is not the risk factor, which is most certainly there, but the fact that it rarely happens.

Both rarely happen, yet you only err with the side of caution when it comes to riding a bike. Perhaps some personal bias is being allowed to enter your discussion on that subject.

It doesn't make sense otherwise. It's possible to get concussion and other serious injuries from a regular textbook tackle, should we get rid of those too?

 

[Coxy]

No Nashy, that's not how risk assessment works. Sure, the historical occurrence of something should be taken into account for the "likelihood" variable, but it's also a judgment call. Just because something hasn't happened previously doesn't mean it won't.

In a game of rugby league every player is hit with heavy contact numerous times. In every hit there is a likelihood of head impact. Shoulder charges are one contributor to that likelihood because generally the tackler has no control over it.

It'd be valid to compare that to cycling if every cyclist fell on nearly every ride, and thus having a helmet would make sense in all situations.

It's a totally bogus comparison.

 

[Nashy]

No Nashy, that's not how risk assessment works. Sure, the historical occurrence of something should be taken into account for the "likelihood" variable, but it's also a judgment call. Just because something hasn't happened previously doesn't mean it won't.

In a game of rugby league every player is hit with heavy contact numerous times. In every hit there is a likelihood of head impact. Shoulder charges are one contributor to that likelihood because generally the tackler has no control over it.

It'd be valid to compare that to cycling if every cyclist fell on nearly every ride, and thus having a helmet would make sense in all situations.

It's a totally bogus comparison.

I see you're still failing to make the connection. Don't get me wrong, I understand what you're saying.

Just because something hasn't happened previously doesn't mean it won't

Like the amount of head injuries attributed to people falling off bikes. Just because it doesn't happen currently, doesn't mean it isn't going to start happening. More and more people are starting to ride them, and I have absolutely no doubt that many, many people fall off their bikes daily. Many of those people could have hit their head, but brushed it off as nothing because the helmet took the impact. Then it's forgotten.

In a game of rugby league every player is hit with heavy contact numerous times. In every hit there is a likelihood of head impact. Shoulder charges are one contributor to that likelihood because generally the tackler has no control over it.

That's correct, it's one of a lot of things that happen on a football field that can cause harm to the head. A one on one tackle, around the legs of the attacker, is simply another contributor, and in my short experience with the game (compared to most), it causes more head knocks than a good shoulder charge.

Look how many knees, elbows and heads impact a players skull in a game. It happens all the time, look at the accidental (this is not for debate by blues fans, it's an example) elbow from Slater in the recent Origin series. Should we ban tackles like that, and ban players from being allowed to move their arms too?

Nearly all tackles have the potential to injure a head of a player. Shoulder charges cannot be blamed to any detrimental damage to any player that I know of, and certainly no one has come forward since my last mention of this to prove me wrong. However, if there are some, I expect whoever mentions them, to mention the hundreds of head knocks players have taken in the past.

It'd be valid to compare that to cycling if every cyclist fell on nearly every ride, and thus having a helmet would make sense in all situations.

I don't agree at all. It would be invalid to compare them if we were speaking of tacking as a whole. But we're not. We're talking about two things that don't/didn't happen often. It's completely fair to compare the two.

It's a totally bogus comparison.

No it's not.

 

[Porthoz]

Coxy, you've just made one hell of a jump. Besides, anyone NOT using the available historical evidence or overriding it with their own judgement as a part of their assessment, is a fully fledged moron!

Risk assessment is pretty simple: Severity x Likelihood x Frequency

If you're trying to say that riding a bike without a helmet is a lesser risk than playing Rugby League where shoulder charges are not illegal, you really need to ask your OHS guy to give a refresher! :scared:

Just to start, severity=death would get a much higher score for bike riding than for playing RL.
Likelihood would be greater in RL, but not that much greater than bike, because only a small percentage of players suffer a shoulder charge and only a small percentage of shoulder charges ends up in a head injury, while as rare as bike falls would be, they would also represent a far larger chance of head injury.
Frequency would really make the difference, with RL being once a week thing for half a year, compared to the amount of times people use the bike.

For the sake of argument, let's make frequency the same as playing RL. I would definitely argue that bike riding without a helmet is a higher risk than playing rugby league where shoulder charges are allowed.