Dogs veteran says no easy fix to high-tackle dramas
Scott Bailey |
Canterbury veteran Kurt Mann has warned there is no easy solution to the NRL’s high-tackle epidemic, insistent players simply lowering their target level won’t work.
The Bulldogs found themselves in the centre of the foul-play dramas last week, with three players sin-binned in their 42-18 flogging from Brisbane.
Canterbury will feel the aftershocks in Magic Round, with Matt Burton, Josh Curran and Sitili Tupouniua all suspended for their clash with Gold Coast.
Bulldogs players are confident their discipline issues are merely a blip, adamant they do not have issues around foul play after being relatively clean prior to that.
But there is no doubt around a rise of close to 90 per cent in high tackles in 2025.
The NRL’s match review committee have identified a whopping 379 tackles as high this year, at a rate of almost six each match.
Some 31 players have been sin-binned for dangerous play, while the NRL have handed out a record $104,650 in fines and 54 games in bans for foul play in the first eight rounds.
But the Bulldogs’ most-capped player in Mann wants to stress the message from some quarters to simply lower the target area isn’t practical.
“If things happen in a split second, someone can run into a player next to you and ricochet into you. It’s not as easy as just lowering target areas,” Mann said.
“When you’re out in the middle and you’re in the washing machine, you’re just doing your best. You’re just trying to make the tackles at some point.
“The falling ones, I don’t know what you’re supposed to do there.
“Or if someone has lowered their contact level they hit them around the legs, but (the attacker) fall head-first into someone next to them.
“There’s not a whole heap you can do in that situation if you’re with a bloke. And to get sent for 10 on something like that would be pretty disappointing.”
Mann said he could understand the NRL wanting to protect players, and backed the league’s approach to raise the bar of foul play required for the bunker to stop play and order a sin-bin from now on.
The message comes after NRL bosses conceded the bunker interjected too often in round eight, where a record 18 players were sin-binned across the weekend.
Wests Tigers prop Fonua Pole, Manly counterpart Siua Taukeiaho and Dolphins half Kodi Nikorima were all sin-binned well after the fact in games.
Each of the trio were only fined by the match review committee, who did not deem any of the offences serious enough to warrant a suspension.
“It’s definitely a good idea. I don’t think you should stop the free-flowing nature of the game,” Mann said.
“I don’t think you should be going back and sending blokes off from something that happened eight plays before.
“If it wasn’t significant enough to stop the game, then it shouldn’t be significant to stop it now.
“Momentum is everything in the modern game. A minor infringement can cost you a whole game.”
AAP
