The Halftime Spray #20 (2014)

Last weekend the Newcastle Knights staged a magnificent victory against the Melbourne Storm, scoring a try after the siren sounded to level the scores, before the boot of Kurt Gidley sealed the miraculous victory.

It prompted Craig Bellamy to go into a tirade against one of the two on-field referees, Ashley Klein, claiming Klein had some sort of vendetta against the Storm.

Bellamy said: "Ashley Klein obviously doesn't like the way we play our footy. We've had that many times when we've had him this year and the penalty count, it hasn't even been close. Every time we have Ashley we always seem to be on the wrong side of the penalty count and a fair way on the wrong side."

Craig, your abysmal sportsmanship aside, you are completely wrong, on several points.

If Klein doesn't like the way you play and has an issue with the Melbourne Storm, why is it that your team has won 14 of 24 games played under Klein's control?

Klein has officiated 6 of Melbourne's 20 games this year. They were:

Round 2 - Melbourne def Penrith 18-17. Melbourne won the penalty count 11-10

Round 4 - Canterbury def Melbourne 40-12. Penalties were drawn 7 all.

Round 8 - Warriors def Melbourne 16-10. Warriors won the penalty count 5-4

Round 12 - North Queensland def Melbourne 22-0. Cowboys won the penalty count 7-4

Round 16 - St George-Illawarra def Melbourne 24-12. Penalties were drawn 3 all.

Round 22 - Newcastle def Melbourne 32-30. Newcastle won the penalty count 11-3

Prior to last weekends game, Melbourne had won 1 penalty count, drawn 2 counts and lost 2 counts. They had received 29 penalties to their opponents 32, in games refereed by Klein this season.

Hardly 'a fair way on the wrong side.'

Melbourne has a long history of introducing ugly wrestling tactics to ball carriers to slow down the play the ball or disable opponents. So proficient were they that the NRL brought in laws against the crusher tackle and the chicken wing.

Melbourne's latest tactic has involved a defender lifting up one leg of an attacker as high as they can in an attempt to halt their momentum and turn them around.

Given how badly one of their lifting tackles went earlier the year on Newcastle Knights player Alex McKinnon, you would think the Storm would abandon this particular practice.

It's grubby, it's ugly, it makes the game look unattractive, it injures players and even laws have had to be made to restrict the usage of some of their tactics.

Klein has every right to not like their style of football.

And to learn that Klein has been punished and dropped to lower grades after Bellamy's outright lies is utterly disgraceful.

Bellamy's comments were no doubt a ploy to get referee's to officiate in a manner more favourable toward the Storm.

And that is as deplorable as Melbourne's wrestling tactics.

National Rehabilitation League (2014)

This week we have seen the great news coming from both the Newcastle Knights in regards to Alex McKinnon.

McKinnon suffered a horrible spinal injury when he fell awkwardly in an illegal spear tackle earlier this year. Initially there were fears he’d be a quadriplegic.

Since then he has shown insurmountable spirit and courage to try and get himself better. He can move his head and he is able to move both arms and hands. He even has some sensation in his legs.

Alex is a fighter and his recovery is remarkably inspiring. He has an entire community of Rugby League fans around the world wishing him the best.

This week the NRL announced that they would create a job for life for Alex if he requires it. The Newcastle Knights, who had been in contract negotiations with him earlier this year, signed him to a contract over 3 years. Intelligently too, the NRL waived this contract from the Knights salary cap.

Magnificent gestures all round by all involved.

Today, an article called Simon Dwyer the NRL’s dirty secret. Simon Dwyer was a very promising second rower for the Wests Tigers who was touted as a future Origin star, and rightfully so.

But an attempted tackle resulted in Dwyer receiving a spinal injury. While Dwyer can still walk and function reasonably well, he has next to no function in his right arm. The tone of the article was to emphasise that both Dwyer and McKinnon received spinal injuries, McKinnon rightfully received a lot of support while Dwyer, it was assumed, had received nothing.

While the assumption is unfair and mostly incorrect, for me it raises another issue, about player welfare. Each club has their own doctors and rehabilitation staff for their contracted players. But what happens when those players suffer career ending injuries? They retire and are barely heard of since.

And in most cases, they are not providing the services of their former clubs medical and rehabilitation services.

Now I’m going to go on a tangent here briefly. Yesterday the Liberal Government released its commission of audit, essentially a briefing outlining where money could be saved. In a number of cases this even suggested some departments could be closed down completely, leaving many highly skilled and qualified people without work.

As I looked through the list I saw one department and instantly thought of Simon.

Commonwealth Rehabilitation Services (or CRS) is a department that specialises in helping disabled (be it physically, mentally, or both) find sustainable work that doesn’t impact on their disability and ensures that they can produce a high standard of work and earn a good income (essentially reducing or removing the need of money they receive from welfare). It was initially set up to help returned servicemen from World War II.

If this department were to close, the NRL could make a very wise and intelligent move, possibly even the most significant and forward thinking concept of any professional sporting body in the world. They could hire a heap of these highly skilled people to work with players who suffered career ending injuries to help them find alternative work and to keep in touch with them to make sure they are coping well.

It would be essentially the game turning full circle and going back to its first reason of coming into existence, the welfare of the players.

The Halftime Spray #3 (2014)

With the devastation of Alex McKinnon's injury from a spear tackle still very raw in the minds of every Rugby League fan, official, player, administrator and family members, one could understand that a crack-down on spear tackles and an influx of lengthy suspensions would follow to try and wipe the tackle out of the game for good.

And not one person would be angered or upset by that. In fact, it would have been met largely with open arms and support.

This past week we saw a number of dangerous tackles, most notably one by Dragons talented forward Jack de Belin against South Sydney's Sam Burgess, which saw Burgess fall head first into the ground with his feet pointing straight up. Burgess was able to roll himself so as to avoid a serious injury. Jack de Belin was put on report.

He wasn't sent off. Not even sin binned.

But the travesty doesn't end there. He was eventually given a Grade 1 Dangerous Throw charge, the lightest possible charge you could receive. This resulted in him copping a suspension for one week.

Wests Tiger's five-eighth Braith Anasta was suspended for the same amount of time for a lazy and careless shoulder charge. 

But in no way was Anasta's illegal tackle as dangerous as de Belin's was, yet according to the NRL's Match Review Committee, they were about the same.

Is it only possible that justifiably long suspensions for illegal tackles can be handed down only when the tackled player is seriously injured? What sort of a backward Mickey Mouse operation is this?

It's high time that lifting in tackles started getting very hefty penalties. So here's my idea. Scrap these 5 separate gradings, it allows for too much leniency. Three should be ample.

Grade 1: If a player puts his hand between a players legs and lifts - 1 to 2 weeks suspension.
Grade 2: If a player is lifted to the horizontal, not beyond it -3 to 6 week's suspension.
Grade 3: If a player is lifted and tipped beyond the horizontal - at least 7 weeks suspension.

It may seem excessive, but really, what would we rather see, spear tackles eradicated from the game, or more players who have to go through the ordeal that has tragically befallen poor Alex McKinnon.

The NRL is seriously lacking in consistency. On Tuesday the Bulldogs were handed an infraction for not following their new concussion guidelines, when they allowed Josh Jackson to play in Round 2.

While the decision against the Bulldogs and Anasta show that they can get these decisions right, the decisions against de Belin and other players who committed illegal tackles, especially over the last weekend (spear tackles, crusher tackles), which can cause very severe injuries have been given excessively soft penalties.

If the NRL continues with this stance, they are simply telling clubs that these illegal plays are tolerated. Is that what they want?

The Halftime Spray #1 (2014)

The Friday night clash between Wests Tigers and Souths was one that should be a great worry for referees. It was pretty clear that in the last 10 minutes, that the referees had lost control of the players. This was entirely due to the on-field referees being too timid about sending any players off the field.

Whether this fear is due to not wanting to make things unfair by allowing one side to have more players, or to avoid scrutiny by fans, or being a prominent factor in the result, either way, they failed.

Several players were put on report, 2 were sent to the sin bin (albeit one was for a professional foul not harming other players) and both fullbacks copped high shots, leaving Greg Inglis unable to play after just 5 minutes, and James Tedesco copping three heavy high tackles.

On Monday night, Melbourne Storm were penalised on several occasions in the first half alone for lifting in tackles, one of which went horribly wrong just seconds before halftime which has now left Newcastle Knights player Alex McKinnon in hospital with severe neck damage which could take between months and years to fully recover from.

Accidents do happen and that is the nature of the beast. However, I believe in both games, intervention from referees could have been vital in changing the players attitudes regarding their repeated infringements and thus changed the way the players acted.

Over the past few years there has been an immense increase in the number of players being reported for infringements and, compared to over a decade ago, a dramatic reduction in sin-binnings and send-offs for dangerous conduct.

I believe that if an incident is bad enough to be penalised and put on report, then it's bad enough to warrant at least 10 minutes in the sin bin.

If this policy was in place, it would make every player on the field, not just those on the team of the sin-binned player, to pull their heads in, as they know any illegal hits will mean that they are not only going to get ten in the bin, but it will also risk their team conceding points.

It will also allow referees to retain control of a game when things get heated after an illegal action.

And no one is going to complain when referees are making decisions based on the safety and welfare of the players, while also cleaning the game up and making it very clear that foul play will be dealt with immediately, which sends the right message to all involved.

As a side note, I'd like to send my best wishes to Alex McKinnon and I hope he has a full and speedy recovery. Right now, getting better and back on your feet is the only important thing.