The Biff Is Back In Rugby League And It’s Dividing The Game

The too'ing and fro'ing has already begun following a decision by Rugby League's international governing body to relax punishments for fighting in the upcoming Four Nations tournament. The tournament, which begins on Saturday (AEDT) with Australia vs Scotland will not see players automatically sin-binned for brawling, signalling a departure from the National Rugby League (Australia) and Super League (UK) edict that players who throw fists be immediately sent from the field.

The new interpretation was immediately brought to light earlier this week during a warm-up match between England and France in which tempers frayed and the fists came out, though no one was sent from the field.

"You can't take the emotion out of our game. A little incident happened. It got a bit bigger than what it was but after that it was a pretty clean game," said England coach, Wayne Bennett after the game.

"No-one could say it was a game that was full of thuggery. It just happens sometimes. It's body contact," he said.

Three years ago fighting was eliminated virtually overnight from the NRL by the introduction of mandatory ten minute sin-bins for any player who threw a punch.

The policy was brought in by Welsh businessmen turned National Rugby League CEO, Dave Smith, who'd sought to give the game a PR facelift after NSW Blues Origin enforcer Paul Gallen tried to give Nate Myles one with this brutal three punch combo.

The revert back to the old laws has immediately divided the game. Echoing the anti-violence zeitgeist of the times - one in which two one-punch deaths on the streets of Sydney have plunged the nation into a moral panic about fighting - former footballer Mathew Johns, speaking on his Triple M Radio Show, The Grill Team, spoke on behalf of all football fans, saying:

"I think most people have lost the appetite for that kind of violence."

"Don't get me wrong, the UFC is the fastest growing sport and people will point to that. But in society, how many people hate the UFC? In society?"

"If you're looking in this country to be a mainstream sport, and being on prime time, I think people have lost the appetite for violence like that," he said.

His co-host and renowned brawler slash Rugby League hardman, Mark Geyer, agreed.

"You'd probably think I'm the first person to say 'yes, beautiful, bring it back'," Geyer said.

"But we've kind of gone past it. I think that boat's sailed, with the shoulder charge is gone now — I think the game's — look at last year's competition without it.

"I know there's a lot of niggle in the game as far as people going in pushing and all that but we don't want blokes going in.

"The size of players today, honestly. You don't want some bloke coming from behind and whacking another bloke in the jaw.

" …All it takes is one big hulking front rower to hit a halfback in the jaw and knock him to the ground and we'd go 'is that necessary?"

In Rugby League, much as in Ice Hockey, fighting has, for better or worse, played an important role in the way the game has been played for decades. The Nate Myles vs Paul Gallen exchange, while deplored for its graphic violence, perfectly illustrates why fighting exists in the sport. In a game as relentlessly brutal as Rugby League there is infinite opportunity for players to get away with well-disguised though incredibly injurious foul play. Much of which goes unpenalised. Nate Myles was a master of it, applying sneaky head-butts to star players, twisting knees in tackles, and attacking the backs and sides of legs as ball-runners attempted to go to ground. It might not always get picked up by the referees but the players definitely keep a running tally of a rival's indiscretions. And when they go too far they get smacked up a bit, which is what happened to Myles. In some ways it stops players from going out to hurt. Because if you go to far you risk getting the shit punched out of out of you, regardless if the referee saw it or not. It's also a great spectacle, one that is largely free of risk in the confines of a stadium with dozens of cameras and tens of thousands of fans (no one has ever died in a professional rugby league fight).

Removing fighting, says one side of the debate, removes one of the most effective deterrents for deliberate, discreet foul play. Late hits, high-shots, forearms to the head, shoulders to the spine, head-slams, crushers, chicken wings, grapple tackles, and whatever else I've forgotten to name certainly injure far more players than the occasional fight, which, in reality occur sparingly in any weekly round of games (there are no statistics available on the prevalence of fights or the amount of injuries they cause but there is no disputing it would be almost neglible compared to other legal and illegal play).

There also needs to be some clarification of what fighting actually means. When it comes to league you can break it into two categories: the honest toe-to-toe variety, which sometimes spreads to several players, or even turns into an all-in brawl. These tend to be a less sinister and largely unavoidable part of a game as physical as this.

Then in category 2 you have the pre-meditated dog shots aka coward punches aka king hits aka cheap shots, for which there is no defence and which should see players severely punished with lengthy bans ranging up to a season or possibly even life.

In the 25 years I've been playing (at park level) and watching this game, I've been hit with three, one of which broke my jaw, and can remember every single incident of this kind of cowardice at the top level. I remember the visceral hate I felt toward Danny Williams after he grotesquely king hit Tigers back-rower Mark O'Neill, which was subsequently met with the longest suspension in NRL history (18 games) not to mention a lifetime of shame and humiliation from the broader community. Or Ben Flowers beyond-horrific attack on a lifeless Lance Hohaia (a prop attacking a diminutive halfback, no less) in the 2014 Super League Grand Final, widely regarded as the low point of modern rugby league. Fowler was in turn given the longest suspension in the game's history - six months - and subjected to days and weeks of death threats and vitriol via social media and nightly news broadcasts.

But there is an upside to these kinds of acts playing out on our TV screens. We get to see the effect of the shame, humiliation and suspension on the perpetrators, and that sends a pretty strong message to the kids and amateurs playing the game on the dimly lit suburban football grounds and rural backwaters where the real bad shit goes down. Don't kid yourself. That's where the problem of violence in rugby league lies. Not on the big screen. The glare of dozens of TV cameras and thousands of fans has a sanitising effect on thuggery.

Stamping out violence at the top level has had little to no effect on the grass roots level. Take this rural NSW Grand final that had to be abandoned this year after countless acts of radical violence, including a player headbutting the referee. Or the Grand Final I attended at Redfern Oval last year between Bondi United and South Eastern which ended in a brawl so bad police had to enter the field to restore order.

The question that must be asked in the policing of fighting in rugby league is whether it is better to publicly crucify the professionals responsible for heinous acts of cowardly violence on TV? Or do we push it underground and pretend it doesn't exist, even though it definitely does?