Coach confusion over tackle crackdown

North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson says gamers may quickly be prohibited from pinning their opponents’ arms in tackles, presenting an “enormous dilemma” for the sport amid a league-wide crackdown.

The premiership winner stated he was perplexed by the suspensions handed right down to gamers this season who had tackled their opponents to the bottom in a single movement – a unique method to the sling deal with during which gamers are effectively conscious they can not execute with out penalties.

Essendon captain Zach Merrett and Collingwood’s Taylor Adams are each interesting one-match suspensions for tackles which led to their respective opponents’ head hitting the turf.

But Clarkson, now in cost at North Melbourne, stated these incidents and the deal with by Hawthorn’s Will Day on Brad Close in spherical 4, which earned the Hawk a suspension, had confused gamers and coaches.

“It’s a difficult one for the game; you’ve got these issues around concussion that they obviously need to be very, very mindful of, but we can’t lose sight of the fact of just how difficult our game is,” Clarkson stated.

“In some of these incidents – the Will Day one from Hawthorn, he was just in the process of tackling a player, and if you’re tackling, you’re sometimes going to lose balance.”

The Kangaroos coach stated the league may have to change the umpires’ interpretation of a authorized deal with if it continued to crack down on these during which a participant’s arms are pinned.

“The whole idea of tackling is to actually pin their arms so they can’t dispose of the football, because the ball is in their hands,” he stated.

“So you want to pin the arms, but if you pin their arms, there’s going to be a risk there if they fall to the ground because they lose balance; there’s sometimes going to be head contact with the ground.

“It’s nearly to the point where we’re going to say you can’t even tackle the arms now because everyone who gets tackled and their arms are pinned, they’re at risk of hitting their head on the ground.”

Clarkson stated gamers and coaches confronted an “enormous dilemma” on the sector along with the one posed by concussion considerations for gamers and stated North Melbourne may have to regulate its coaching program because of the stricter MRO interpretation.

“It’s an enormous dilemma for the players and coaches just on how to go about it, because at the minute, we’re having three (suspensions) a week,” he stated.

“It was very definitive what it looked like when there was two motions, grabbing a player and then slinging him – now these are just motions of actually tackling the player.

“Eighty per cent of the time the player gets away with it because the player doesn’t fall over and hit his head. Twenty per cent of the time or less, the player is at significant risk … that’s going to be a challenge for everyone in the game.”

Originally printed as Premiership coach Alastair Clarkson puzzled by deal with rulings

Source: www.dailytelegraph.com.au