IIt was in the middle of winter, when rugby league was far from most people’s minds, that one of the game’s biggest names said this to me. Led by IMG, the sport has been preparing for the most important season of the modern era, with the weeks leading up to the start of the new Super League campaign busier than ever and more exciting than the sport has ever seen. Much publicity, coverage and, no doubt, the mainstream attention that rugby league has longed for has finally arrived. “This buzz is something we’ve never experienced before,” they said. “But look: we’re going to find a way to mess it up. That’s the way rugby league is.”
Three weeks into the new campaign, these words linger with me. The buzz at IMG has been replaced by unhealthy infighting between administrators, players and supporters, but more importantly, utter chaos has cast a pall over the start of a bright new era for rugby league.
This has been a while. The threat of change has loomed over the rugby union since it was determined that the rugby league would face legal action from a group of former players who accuse the sport of negligence in failing to act to protect them from serious brain injuries. This year, the changes come with the arrival of a raft of legal amendments aimed at minimizing contact with the head and introducing tougher penalties for challenges that breach these rulings. By 2025, their policies will be even stricter and touching above the armpit will be illegal. Regardless, the rule change was controversial, but the aftermath of its implementation was a mess.
There were several major hot spots in the first three rounds of the Chinese Super League in the new season, the most prominent of which was that Hull FC center back Nu Brown was sent off due to an accidental head conflict against Warrington. The uproar over Brown’s red card led to the RFL admitting its framework on head contact was too harsh and that future accidental head clashes would not be punished so harshly. But that’s the problem in a nutshell: changes in rules, and lack of clarity around them, only creates confusion. What is a red card? What’s not? No one seems to know; that’s a problem.
Senior Super League players have met with the RFL to seek clarification after publicly expressing their frustration at the lack of consultation over rule changes. A strike has even been mooted: although it is understood that this is unlikely to happen for a variety of reasons, not least that the players would be striking against their employers – the clubs themselves – rather than the RFL and the sport. But the fact that players are unhappy is a warning to game operators.
With the details of the law changing every week, the league is treading a fine line between satisfying insurance companies willing to risk supporting a game that faces legal threats and not taking away from one of the game’s main selling points – that it’s a dynamic, highly The drama of conflict – It’s completely understandable that players and coaches feel a little lost about what they can and can’t do.
But again, this frustration from players highlights a broader issue that IMG should be focusing on: If players don’t understand the complexities of the legal changes, how will the general audience understand them? IMG’s mission this year is to bring a new perspective to rugby league and engage young audiences through superstars such as Jack Welsby and Jay Field, who are exceptional athletes deserving of mainstream attention.
However, if someone who has watched the game for decades doesn’t understand the laws surrounding head contact, how can a newcomer understand it all? Any League supporter who still believes there is a serious rivalry between the two codes of rugby will argue that one of the league’s strengths is its simplicity: six tackles, kick and repeat. But in many ways, the rules of the game have never been more difficult to understand – which is causing problems not only for IMG, but also for the RFL.
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At this point, it’s important to emphasize that this confusion is not caused by those who play the sport. In this case, their action was forced by legal threats faced by the rugby union. Without these changes, pros will likely have a hard time getting insurance this year — a situation that was so dire just a few months ago. But there is an urgent need for clear, simple communication on what the legal changes actually mean. Most people understand why these changes are happening, but they now need to understand what the sport will look like in the future to fully embrace them.
The current difficulties are satisfying for everyone in charge. Yes, it is absolutely paramount that Rugby Football League ensures that current and future generations are as safe as possible to avoid a repeat of the hardships that groups of former players may have faced. But there is also a need to ensure that the sport retains its core values of excitement and entertainment and, most importantly, that the rules of the sport are clear and coherent for existing and new supporters. Without that, this early season drama would only get worse – the prospect of a worst-case scenario is simply unthinkable.
