It wasn’t hard to police when the attacker simply had responsibility to keep hold of the ball, and there was no two man tackle stripping nonsense.

Just allow stripping of the ball regardless of the numbers in the tackle and put the onus on the ball carrier.

Could you allow stripping on initial contact only?



There’s so much wrestle these days that it could get extremely messy otherwise.



Maybe once the referee calls the tackle held, the man in possession can’t be dispossessed and play is suspended until the PTB - i.e. no knock-on or stripping allowed. We need to remove the incentive for defenders to displace the ball or for the attacker to lose it on purpose when more then one player is in the tackle, just to win the penalty.

The whole stripping the ball out is getting annoying. I don’t think you can blame the refs as it’s largely 50/50 whether it’s a loose carry or an actual strip. Every tackler needs to wrap the ball up to stop the offload. 2 refs is only solution I can think of, and even then it’s still bound to be contentious.



WRT comments on Powell. I think a coach rarely has the full package. McDermott to me wasn’t much of a skills coach and our rugby under him was fairly poor, but he knew how to win a final, get a team motivated and manage big egos. Powell to me, coaches a good style of rugby, and manages to improve average players the most out of any coach in SL. Whether that’s enough to win finals remains to be seen.

I'd also be for a trial of limiting the players who can get involved in a tackle to 2.

2 referees will help a lot imo

Wouldn't like this. Always enjoy seeing gang tackles and players clattered into touch or in goal. Also, before you know it we'd have refs giving penalties as soon as a 3rd player laid a finger on the carrier, regardless of whether they were playing an effective part of the tackle.

For me is hard to police any way around. Now the players are fitter, two or three man tackles and a wrestle on the floor is the norm. Given that, if the onus was on the ball carrier to look after the ball, we'd have turn overs every set.

Like Kaeru Jims suggestion.

Agree, but we would need to double the size of the first grade ref pool. Not sure that can be done in short order

We've already got 2 refs, one of them is called a video ref. He has several views of any tackle situation and could quickly intervene if the onfield ref gets it wrong. I also think the touch judges should do more to help the ref regarding offsides, forward passes, knock on etc.

I honestly think prevention is better than cure. We need to make the rules simpler and easier to enforce (and get right), and MINIMISE the number of judgement calls officials need to make.



One referee is sufficient if the players are incentivised correctly. i.e. if there is no competitive advantage to be gained from an action, they will stop doing it.