Quote Madderzahatter="Madderzahatter"How hard is it to roll away from the ruck when you've made a tackle? '"
Sometimes easy, sometimes not. Depends on the type of tackle and how many tacklers involved. It also ignores the point about leaving those players instantly offside or not square. So leaving a massive area for the dummy half to scoot into. We can have that if we want, but I don't think tacklers should be punished (by being made offside and so out of play) simply for making a legal tackle. And I certainly don't want to see the game dominated by dummy half runs.
Quote Madderzahatter="Madderzahatter"How hard it it to play the ball without moving 5 yards off the mark? '"
Again, sometimes easy sometimes hard. A tackled player uses a lot of energy to get up off the floor and play the ball quickly. This sometimes leads to players moving off the mark or appearing to dive forwards when in fact it's just the momentum from getting up quickly.
We can stop this if we want. But it would lead to significantly slower play the balls.
Also sometimes players are knocked into by retreating defenders/tacklers getting into position or there is a defender still on the floor where the play the ball would take place. Most of these actions by defenders are accidental and a result of the massively increased speed of the game these days.
Again we can stop this if we want, but it leads to a slower game.
Quote Madderzahatter="Madderzahatter"How hard is it to put your foot on the ball when you're playing it? '"
Quite hard actually, especially for bigger players when tired or starting from an awkward position.
If it was easy why wouldn't everyone do it?
As with the others, we can "clamp down" on this if we want but I find it a largely irrelevant part of the play that strict penalising of it would only slow down the game.
Quote Madderzahatter="Madderzahatter"I'm all for speeding up the PTB, but it can be done correctly - the Aussies seem to have cleared things up and their game is quicker than Super League now (which is what Wigan found out in the WCC). Refs need to sort it out...'"
Those things you mentioned rarely provide much of a benefit to either side and I think a strict reading of the rules would only damage the game and not improve it. There can never be a rule book that completely and absolutely lays down rules for every aspect of play.
For instance the holding down rule. How long is allowed before a penalty is given? The only way to prescribe that properly is to give a time period. But in some cases that would be too long, eg a 1 man tackle round the legs, and in others would be too short eg a 3/4 man tackle that leaves 1 defender underneath the attacker and the other 3 peeling off.
So we have to rely on a refs interpretation of that rule.
The ptb's in the NRL aren't perfect either. They're better and quicker because they have the 2nd ref telling both attacker and defenders what to do. But they still have plenty of play the balls off the mark and plenty of play the balls occurring without it being played by the foot.
The 2nd ref has helped a lot and is something I think we should have but they don't apply a strict rule book approach to the play the ball either.
