In the bizarro world of the National Rugby League, many good judges are trembling that the match review committee might charge Manly’s Willie Mason for his apparent shoulder charge on South Sydney’s Tom Burgess.

Hopefully, logic and sane minds prevail and the veteran prop is free to play in Canberra on Sunday against the Raiders.

The fact Mason’s tackle is even being considered as a shoulder charge by some shows we have another problem. We’ve forgotten what a shoulder charge looks like. In the understandable media frenzy since Queensland Cup player James Ackerman’s death, we are looking at everything with a magnifying glass and a fine tooth comb which is fair enough.

There is no arguing Ben Matulino’s hit on St George Illawarra’s Gareth Widdop on Saturday night in Wellington. The Kiwi had intent, force and time to shape himself to perform a shoulder charge.

To argue Mason or even Jayson Bukuya’s shot at Remondis Stadium are the same is ridiculous.

Back to Mason because it is one thing for the NRL to immediately charge any shoulder charge but it’s another to throw all arm-less hits into the one basket.

Eighth Immortal Andrew Johns played through an era where every opposing forward in the competition wanted to hit him with a shoulder charge and knock him stone cold out of the game.

“It’s meant to be ‘with force’. That was a cuddle,” Johns said on The Sunday Footy Show.

Forget the fact there was no force. Forget the fact that the 196cm tall, 125kilogram Tom Burgess changed direction and picked out the flatfooted Mason and forget the fact that Mason was simply shielding himself the best he could from the collision.

Search Sonny Bill Williams on Youtube. Now they’re shoulder charges.

Just last week Sydney’s Kane Evans smashed Bulldogs’ big man Sam Kasiano, this is the tackle the NRL are trying to outlaw.

The most obvious way to tell a shoulder charge is when the defending player has time to adjust his body to attack with the shoulder, thus proving intent.

If you look closely at Mason’s tackle from Friday night you can see that his shoulders were still facing the eastern and western sides of Brookvale Oval a split-second prior to contact. At the very last moment, he braces for the tackle doing the only thing he could do, he gets his forearm between himself and Burgess.

This is not a shoulder charge.

Evans’ huge hit on Kasiano was always going to be a shoulder charge; you can see it from as far back as five metres when Evans is preparing for the contact.

“If we do anything in the coming weeks, it’ll be to tighten our policy around the shoulder charge, not loosen it” Head of Football Todd Greenberg said last Thursday.

“We’ve demonstrated this over the last couple of years.

“Where we see issues in the game that we need to act, then we will.”

There is nothing wrong with banning the shoulder charge. But that’s only if we make it crystal clear what a legitimate shoulder charge is.

Water down the game for the greater good, but don’t flood it.

@CurtisWoodward1