As it has been every season since Rex “The Moose” Mossop argued the toss on Channel 7’s Controversy Corner, rugby league people will rail on Sunday mornings about consistency in the game – or more to the point, the lack of it.
Rugby league has always lusted after it: the holy – and completely unachievable – grail of consistency. And in the game’s understandable if deluded efforts to control something so random as rugby league, the game has looked to eradicate the “grey”, the “messy” and the unscripted by eradicating competition for the ball.
There was a time, long before even Moose, that a marker could “ruck” the ball back at the play-the-ball. There was a time that scrums involved six forwards binding tightly and pushing, with hooker, tight-head and loose-head forwards worthy of the name. There was a time when Allan Langer, a tiny dancer, a genius, could inveigle himself into the rib-cages of the game’s biggest players, wrench the ball free and steal away like a snowy-haired reaver in the night.
No more, of course. Scrums are dead and raking for the ball is long dead. Langer’s party trick was outlawed because Langer was so good at it. And maybe someone can convince you that the game is better for it.
But it’s making a comeback, in some way, at least.. Like cricket’s constant battle between bat and ball, rugby league has tweaked the stripping rule and the result is that there is an opportunity for the defending team to get the ball.
Stripping has been perhaps the most vexed, annoying and “grey” rule for the last few years. What constitutes a strip? What’s been dropped? What’s been dropped to make it look like a strip? What’s been dropped because it’s been roughly jolted free? And is that a strip? Why? And so on. It’s a super-tough gig adjudicating all this on the fly and nigh on every ball dislodged in a tackle is subject to the vagaries of the referee’s call. And in many cases they’ll just up and guess. Sometimes they’ll make a call based on the state of the game so they don’t affect the result and thus be dropped from first grade.
But the new rule – in which a player can steal the ball one-on-one even if a tackle began with more than just one – looks like it could open the game up for more unscripted action. Competition for the ball is back. Ball security is the new black. The message to the ball-carrier is: you are responsible for carrying the ball. And ball-carriers, it seems, aren’t ready for it.
On Thursday night in the derby game in the Shire, Dragons star Gareth Widdop dropped the ball and appealed that it was raked out. Andrew Fifita did too. Jason Nightingale twice dropped the ball and both times appealed to the referee with a league player’s patented “wide eyes of a child” defence: palms upwards, mouth open, making a reefing gesture to allege the ball had been wrenched from his grasp.
And looking at both incidents, Nightingale was right. Where his defence falls flat is that the Dragons did nothing illegal. They were entitled to wrench the ball from Nightingale’s grasp as they were, at the time, in one-on-one tackle situations.
Last year when defenders dropped off in a tackle, that was it. Play the ball. This year, the last defender can have a crack at the ball. And you’d suggest it’ll be a legitimate and percentage play given that when someone drops the ball it’s automatically knock-on.
League defenders work over attackers in the tackle. Every tackle is a dance, almost like rugby union’s mauls. The attacker isn’t only stopped but he’s roughed up, wrestled, manoeuvred. Defenders are expert at it and with training they could become very good at ball-stealing, too.
On Friday night at Allianz Stadium, the Bulldogs’ Danny Fualalo made a hard charge into the meat of the Roosters’ forward division. Dylan Napa was around his ankles and prop forward Sio Siua Taukeiaho worked his upper body. Fualalo kicked free from Napa’s tackle but Taukeiaho was still up top, working the man and ball. As Fualalo feell, Taukeiaho stripped it away like Langer used to, and burned away 40 metres upfield, as Langer used to, the crowd baying and laughing in equal measure. That was not possible in 2017. This year, it’s a featured highlight. The old Moose would approve.
