CW8 wrote:
Knowles (and the rest of the Saints squad) has got away with lots that he shouldn't have in the past few seasons. All that's happened is the preferential treatment has ended and now they're facing the same as everyone else. He has previous in terms of some really poor tackles, wasn't it him that injured mcgilvary for 6 months last season? Jow he has injured Cooper for 9-12 months and potentially ended his career, Johnstone didn't even need a HIA yet the same ban. I agree with mcgilvarys tweet that these tackles need to be outlawed.
Knowles didn't concede a penalty for the McGilveray tackle. It was looked at and they decided there was nothing wrong with it. There wasn't. His tweet yesterday was bizarre and he should be fined for it. 'These tackles'? What do that mean? In the McGilveray one, he was overpowered by three Saints players, his upper body was turned back (As defending teams are taught to do, in order to maximise the time the ptb takes) and taken to ground. Knowles did not leave the floor at all or fall onto the legs of the player. He just got his leg caught trying to oppose the tacklers and make more progress. It was not a similar tackle to the one in the Wigan game and it was not a 'hip drop'.
The hysteria around the tackle in the Wigan game is bizarre. People have just seen the injury and decided it's got to be a bad tackle. In all seriousness, you cannot see Knowles doing anything illegal on the angles available on Twitter. On the main angle, you cannot even see him at all as he's hidden by Lussick. In this tackle he wrestles Cooper in an attempt to bring him down and there is a collision of four bodies and Knowles' knee hits Cooper's calf as he plants his foot on the floor in an attempt to fend off Lussick. It's just bad luck, there isn't a bad tackle there. He doesn't jump off the floor, he doesn't collapse his own body weight into the legs, in fact he's still on both feet after the injury, although he has lost his footing. But everyone has just jumped all over it hysterically because of the successful appeal, it's just ripped the scab off those wounds and the hysteria yesterday was because of that. If Cooper plays the ball, no one even mentions the tackle. There are Wigan fans bemused by it on Twitter and here, saying there's absolutely nothing in it. There are Warrington fans who don't see it as a bad challenge, former referees saying they can't see anything incriminating that Knowles has done. It's definitely the injury and the embarassment of the appeal last year that causes the severity of the ban, not the challenge itself.
The whole thing comes from the obsession Rugby League as a sport has with wrestling and getting the players down on their back. That is what Knowles is doing and that is what players are taught to do at all levels. Your scholars will be spending hours in the gym learning to rotate and spin players onto their backs. This is where the danger comes in, when you have three or four 18 stone men trying to pin a guy onto his back and the guy trying to oppose that and get down on his front, players are going to get hurt occasionally, it's sport. There is absolutely no intent from Knowles to injure Cooper and the suggestion he's a grub and does it deliberately is pathetic. He has zero previous charges for that kind of tackle, neither do Saints as a club, so the suggestion it's a club issue is also way off the mark. There were three other tackles of the same kind as what Knowles is alleged to have done this weekend, all far more blatant in terms of the deliberateness of the weight on the legs. No mention of those, no kangaroo court for those, no trial by social media for those players, because they were fortunate there was no serious injury.
