Fantastic Mr Catpiss wrote:
just to say as well, the level of tackling in that vid is awful, but there's a lot of stuff in there, definite yellow this season in league, but i thought they went mental in RU for anything near the head?
Not really the same as Burrell though in terms of idiocy.
Genge a significantly better player than Burrell, he’s also younger, and not considerably past his best. Probably harder conditioning wise for a prop, who would be significantly heavier than the RL equivalent. Would make no sense for a RU prop to come across though cause it would remove the scrum, which is half of a props job in RU anyway. That’s why they get the big bucks
There are plenty of players from Union who could migrate across, and that works both ways. Just need to identify the right players, rather than random choices and going for big names. Don’t know why Union don’t do it more often, guess the risk isn’t worth it and the gap isn’t as big as it used to be. Sale have a few former RL youngsters on the books for example, so they are trying to grab them younger. Think it is fairly common for young lads to play both codes at age group level as well.
Lots of those highlights are fairly old, so probably before the high tackle framework was introduced. League is now more strict and irrational re high tackles, cause they took too long to deal with it and are clearly in a massive panic about it.
Don’t get the issue re defence. You could show highlights of League players and the defence wouldn’t look great in isolation. Suspect you could have a 5 min video of Sita Akauola bouncing people! Obviously defence is still stronger in League, and that will always be the case. There is also a bigger size gap from player to player.
