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OPINION:
The NRL is morally and fiscally correct with their crack down on head high contact. Only a former player who has taken too many shots to the skull could disagree. Rugby league needs to evolve for the benefit of all.
Contact to the head in the NRL is notonly a player welfare issue, it's a growth issue and one of financial responsibility. Look after the players the game has, encourage the next level of player coming through and don't bankrupt the game as the rapidly growing litigious threat flexes its muscle.
It's pragmatism at its very best. The grunting from the crack in the rock however, is growing louder. Between the hysterical primeval shrieking and the ferocious echoes of hairy palms slapping on chests, you can almost make out the stone age rhetoric from the small band of knuckle draggers so keen to avoid progress and keep the game at its prehistoric worst.
As we develop as humans, we take on and fine tune lessons from days gone by, lessons based in experience, lessons for the greater good. We don't steadfastly maintain a stranglehold on the flawed aspects of the past, to do so counters everything we stand for. Indeed, even standing showed us to be a progressive form.
The game has moved forward with every generation. The fist flying free for all of the not so recent past is now a memory, sadly dredged up by networks who still seem to revel in the unfettered violence of the on-field Origin melee. What was once an accepted part of league is now a wince inducing recollection.
Ask yourself, is the product a lesser one now that full grown men can't punch each other in the face? The celebrated brute force of the shoulder charge has been left in the past and the game is no worse off for its cancelling.
Wade Graham of the Sharks leaves the field with a head injury during a clash with the Roosters. Photo / Getty
The associated hue and cry when the monstrous no-arm check was banished to the sidelines would have had you believe that the game was on its last legs and couldn't possibly survive the big hit being banned. Not so. Now the tyranny of contact with the head is being lined up for enforced extinction and if you are to believe the guttural wails of exasperation from the mouth breathers, the game will end as we know it.
Remember when seat belts were optional? What about being allowed to smoke in restaurants? Unrestrained children in cars? No life jackets? Hitting kids in the name of discipline? No mouth guards? Manning up and playing through injury? In their day, these were acceptable societal actions, not any more. Because we evolve. Because we learn.
Rugby league is and will remain a physical game, a game of high velocity and immensely powerful bodily confrontation. This will never stop. It is at the heart of the exchange. There will always be huge hits, carcass shaking collisions, overt displays of physical superiority.
It is also a game of subtlety, speed, dexterity and skill. Pin-point kicking, dummy plays, lightening quick interplay. These aspects won't suddenly disappear. The game, under the cosh of concussion litigation and class action will cease to exist. Player numbers will thin. The concussive wreckage in athletes will continue.
The powers that be need to act to circumvent this decay while they still can. This is not killing the game, this is adjusting the exchange so the game may live on.
It's called evolution, and if you don't want to rot in a tar pit, you'd better get used to it.
