Captain Hook wrote:
I totally understand the not pulling up a potentially injured player and thought it was stupid of Vaughan at the time but understandable in the context of the game.
I do think though that a player pretending to be injured who is pulled at should get the same ban as the “puller”. That would be the fairest solution.
No doubt Saints would get in a psychiatrist to claim Matautia was suffering from PTSD rather than a physical injury but that is detail, it may work as a deterrent in both sides
Can't really enforce anything like that. You can get hurt without getting injured. If you take a big hit, tweak your knee or your ankle, get the wind knocked out of you etc you can be slow getting up and then just be fine. Literally nobody can make that judgement and trying to sets a very dangerous precedent.
As for the situation, I understand its incredibly frustrating considering Sione was fine, but I also completely understand why that punishment is there. I said on redvee I think we should let the refs deal with this sort of thing so players don't feel the need to try and take it into their own hands. If somebody is getting up excessively slowly, let the ref either stop the clock, or make a signal with his hands for 10 seconds to be knocked off the clock (or both if the player stays down). That way it wouldn't matter at all if the player is legitimately hurt/injured or not, as the time they've taken has been mitigated and now they can either get treatment or not.
I also think the green card should be used more, and probably shown to any player that stays down injured (not gets up slowly, but stays down). Both of these things together should largely see the play acting get stamped out of the game a bit.
The 6 again rule is making the time wasting at the end worse. Because if there's 10-15 seconds left, players are just holding down and taking the mickey, or staying down and taking the mickey, because any penalisation is just going to be a 6 again, which doesn't stop the game ending. You can just hold down for 20 seconds and the game is over whether you get penalised for it or not.