Four Nations Game 1

Australia in the end won with a comfortable lead and were well deserved winners.  Overall the highlight of the game or should I say blight was the referee Phil Bentham.  This guy obviously does not know what the rules are as the amount of knock-ons missed, continual holding down in the ruck and offside play was something that should not be allowed at this level.  New Zealand in most cases were on the beneficial side of this ref and but showed that they are still not quite up to standard to beat Australia.

And that is where I will leave the overall game analysis to talk about one single incident that should have repercussions but will most likely be swept under the carpet.  That incident is the action of Issac Luke and his tactic of targeting players to cause injury.

In the previous test match played Luke was reported for a cannonball tackle.  For those who don't know this style of tackle is when a player dives at the legs/knees of a player being held up by tacklers in an attempt to bring them down, this is an outlawed tackle and one that is becoming more frequent.  Luke was exonerated of that charge so was able to play this game. In the second half Luke has dived in the same manner at Shillington's knees whilst he was being held still by two tacklers.  Shillington was in obvious pain and looks to have received a serious knee injury.  The officials reviewed the tackle and decided it was a fair hit.  How I do not know, it was no different to the one last week and under the rules was an illegal tackle.  Issac Luke is becoming a serial offender in this style of tackle and it is starting to become a joke that he is able to get away with it.  People always say that it usually takes a serious injury for something to be done to change things but why does someone have to be injured before something is done when everyone already knows it is dangerous.  If Shillington has a serious knee injury he could be out for not only the rest of the 4 nations but for at least 6 months.  Yet Luke will be able to line up next week, play the series out and then get ready for preseason.

It is time that the Rugby League community starting getting more proactive in stamping out tactics that are aimed to deliberately injure players.  Regardless of talent if you are a grub that has to stoop to such levels then your talent should not be wanted in the game.

UPDATE:

Well the little grub got off again.  The judiciary has decided it was enough to officially issue a caution to Luke as the action was "conduct contrary to the true spirit of the game".  If he does it again he will automatically be charged with an offense.  This is not good enough.  He has been referred to the judiciary twice now and even then they are only going to charge him if he does it again.  Most likely they will just let him off again if he is charged.  They needed to have more gaul and suspend him for one week, get the message out there, a slap on the wrist will not stop anything.