BY CURTIS WOODWARD

@woodward_curtis

On Anzac Day at Allianz Stadium, Mosese Suli was knocked senseless on the first play of the game when he got himself caught in a poor position against a charging Jared Waerea-Hargreaves.

Suli wasn’t helped when his teammate Jaydn Su’A bumped into him just split-seconds before contact with Waerea-Hargreaves was made.

It sent the game on a different trajectory, but the Sydney Roosters were imperious, and the Dragons deserved 60 points run up on them.

These are the facts.

An idea to ban kick-offs started from one corner of the media and has snowballed into something bigger.

Big enough now that a certain rugby union scribe has leached onto the story.

Interestingly, the Suli knock-out wasn’t a player in possession at all.

This was a defender that parked his head in front of the runner’s head.

Preventable.

However, the NRL can’t ignore something that can possibly help protect the players from themselves.

We shouldn’t ban the kick-off, yet, and we can’t be reactive… we need to be proactive.

Here’s six ideas better than banning kick-offs in the NRL.

REWARD ONE-ON-ONE LEG TACKLE

Modern players have been trained in the dark arts of wrestling and MMA for far too long and part of that is because the game itself is as quick as it has ever been. Does it need to be so quick? If we can slow the game down, players will have just enough to time to make better defensive reads and get themselves in better positions. Let’s reward a good one-on-one leg tackle with the defender allowed to hold on or for X amount of time which will also eliminate some of the gang tackling in the sport and increase offloads and more space and ad lib footy.

ALLOCATED POSITIONS ON FIELD FOR KICK-OFFS

Go back and watch footage of some of the games from the 1980s and further back than that. We haven’t always had 120 kilogram, 6-foot-4 cyborgs charging into each other at a million miles an hour. Some matches would even start with a deep kick going down field and a halfback or winger bringing the ball back – weaving their way through traffic. Simple solution: take the big boys off the back fence.

SHORTEN PRE-SEASON

This goes further than just what we should do with the kick-off. NRL players have never been bigger or stronger but the lack of technique or lack of reward for low tackles means they are going to keep getting themselves in trouble from kick-offs and other parts of the field. Do they need to be so fit? Do they need to be so strong? The NRL may be in line for a record television rights deal soon on the next cycle but the game is going to look very different in twenty years. The game may not be making so much money which means the player’s salaries would shrink too. If they aren’t spending all their time in the gym and on the training track, fatigue becomes a huge factor in the code again.

FAIR CATCH

Not a huge fan of this one but would edit it slightly where a team kicking off can kick it as high as they want but if the defenders are within ten or fifteen metres of the catch, the catcher can call for a “fair catch” which will save a bullocking front-rower from having to catch the pass and quickly take the contact of the incoming line. It would also deter defending teams from trying to get as much “hang time” on the kick.

SHORT KICK-OFFS ONLY

It would take time getting used to and James Graham on NRL360 on Monday night echoed many punter’s feelings that the game would lose so much of its “edge”, particularly on huge occasions like State of Origin, but the very fabric of the game is being eroded away as we speak, anyway. It’s the easiest solution for the NRL but doesn’t solve everything.

PENALISING ATTACKERS FOR RAISED FOREARMS

So far the attacking player has been mostly protected unlike defenders who are getting penalised, fined and suspended for everything these days. We’ve seen incidents, a few including Tino Fa’asuamaleaui and Jared Waerea-Hargreaves, where the attacker has raised their arms in a “bumping” motion.

@woodward_curtis