Souths prop Sam Burgess gestures to the referee during the Rabbitoh's match against the Storm on Friday night. Source: Getty Images
LIKE most reasonable thinking men, I spent yesterday hiding from Noel Kelly just in case he got frustrated.
That was us brave souls over there, cowering in the corner, legs crossed. Kelly is probably the most loveable bloke in the game now, quick with a story matched only by his wit.
His assessment that Sam Burgess's squirrel grip on Melbourne's Will Chambers was nothing more than frustration borne out of the game no longer tolerating a player being able to punch someone had many of wondering what he is capable of if things got really bad.
What if you accidentally picked up his drink in a bar? Or stepped on his shoe while lined up at the bank?
If you remember rightly, the NRL came out strongly after Origin I and declared that punching was not acceptable and anyone challenging this belief would be immediately sin-binned.
Some lamented the softening of the game, even if it wasn't exactly right. The game has never tolerated punching.
And Kelly should know. He was sent off 17 times in his career, including twice in one game on the 1963 Kangaroo Tour.
He was sent off so many times, he once said, that when he's out front gardening and the postman goes past and blows his whistle he gets up and goes in for a shower.
In other words, it has never been in the rules that you are allowed to punch someone.
Even if you are getting a little frustrated, or things aren't going right, or the guy opposite is laughing at your missing teeth.
Oh, most did it at one time or another, and it was accepted that sometimes it just happened.
But nothing has really changed.
What else hasn't changed is that squirrel grips have never been accepted as fair play on the paddock. Nobody can justify it, or really attempt to, like they might a fight.
But Kelly isn't altogether wrong about increasing frustrations in the game, and the NRL would be wise to hear him out before dismissing him as the ramblings of a sentimental old man.
Noel Kelly after being sent off playing for the Kangaroos against Widnes. Source:
Burgess was clearly frustrated throughout the game. Melbourne's wrestling tactics were strangling the life out of Souths last weekend and, with it, any chance of winning.
Last week on NRL360 we showed how much slower the game is today than it was 20 years ago, running split frames of scrum and penalty restarts and an entire set of six. Despite the players being slower, less fit and less athletic 20 years ago than today, they got to the last tackle six seconds quicker than they do today.
Over 60-70 sets in an average game, that's an extra 360-420 seconds, or an extra six to seven minutes football we had back then that we don't get now.
Then you've got the time wasting at scrums and penalties, where most players have time to roll a cigarette before play restarts.
Poor vigilance has allowed all these bad habits to creep into the game and, slowly, change its fabric.
The wrestling slows it down mostly, though.
So why don't we outlaw it?
Wrestling is like a complicated tax law, too hard to understand, too entangled in the system to simply remove. Best get on with it and hope everybody learns to live with it.
Every club is doing it, not just Melbourne. The Storm just happen to do it best. While it can never be completely eradicated anymore, the NRL needs to find ways to lessen the wrestle's impact. Quite simply now, the best teams are the best wrestlers, as it allows them to dominate defensively and keep fresher for when they have the ball.
The easiest and cleanest way to lessen the wrestle's impact is to cut down on all that rest time before scrums and around penalties and on kick restarts. Countless seconds are burned while players hold committee meetings and referees get their breaths back.
Shortened rest periods would increase fatigue and impact on teams' abilities to get so many players into each tackle to wrestle. It would give us more football in our 80 minutes.
Of course, coaches will then search for other ways to slow the game to reduce the impact a shortened rest was having, particularly if they are about to defend a set, but that again falls back on the lawmakers.
A couple of quick penalties would soon fix that.
The modern player should have no trouble understanding that, and if they do they can ask Kelly what that sound is.
It sounds like the postman riding past while you're out front gardening.
