This:
Differential penalty
A penalty that may not be kicked for goal by the team to which it is awarded.[11] This kind of penalty is awarded when technical rule breaches (i.e. not foul play or obscene language) are committed during the time a scrum exists.[12] A differential penalty can be award against any player, whether in the scrum or outside.[12]
Should be extended to play the ball infringements. For the integrity of the game. Play the ball penalties are often controversial, and referees have given them with the subsequent penalty goal deciding the game.
It often looks like a referee deciding the game, ie. match fixing. I don't understand how something so obvious has not been addressed. There is an arrogance about the NRL administration that refuses to tidy up potential match fixing loop holes because it won't entertain the notion that referees might ever lack integrity.
Agree on the seven tackle set being removed.
I also don't understand why a penalty involves both a metre gaining kick and a reset of the tackle count. It might have made sense in the early days, where there was still a rugby union mentality of rolling sets, balls werent so light and players able to kick them so far.
How about the receiving team electing either a metre gaining kick with no reset (or gimmicky one or other notional amount tackle reset) or a reset of the tackle count? Again, this especially is in defence of play the ball infringement penalties which drive me batshit crazy. Referees have a less than 50/50 strike rate in getting these right in my opinion. There is little the game has been able to do to tidy the play balls up, even with various crackdowns. This favouring the attacking team culture in the rules is such nonsense, because tackled players are often the infringers, walking of the mark, playing the ball incorrectly... Yet refs go "probably the defensive players fault, blow a penalty against". And the there is a double whammy punishment for a highly subjective call.
I have more... I can't remember then at the moment.
Oh, and let's just make the forward pass rule simple. Watch some old games, and it is obvious the reason the rule is that the ball allowed to float ahead from where it was thrown, if it had first been propelled backwards. Due to the reduced athletism, the game was more expansive, passing movements were not as practised and crisp as the modern game and balls passed out wide could float and catch the wind. Especially in more open stadiums than today's modern arenas. Just put the onus on the attacking team to ensure their passes hit a player behind the line from which it was passed...Including if a backward pass goes to ground. The attacker must dive on it before it ends up ahead of the line to avoid a forward pass/ knockon.
Also the knock on by the Broncos full back last year... The player knocked it forward of himself, but as he was jumping back, the ball also went back and the ref had a technical out. It was still an incorrect call, but if they make the rule clear that a player losing control of a ball ahead of the line they were in is a forward pass/ knock on then that's that. Sadly it would mean a player running onto a pass that doesn't.ake an immediate clean grasp but regains ahead of the defensive line, has knocked on... This is suboptimal, but what happened against the Broncos needed a clear cut rule to counter the "ball propelled backwards" nonsense.
