Keep the safari suits in the closet, but bring back one-on-one tackles

The hip drop tackle threatens to haunt this year’s State of Origin series, testing the loyalties of players to their club, or state.

In the recent Storm versus Broncos match, Melbourne hooker Harry Grant was at dummy-half when his teammate, Nelson Asofa-Solomona, went down in a tackle by Brisbane’s Pat Carrigan. Big Nelson grabbed his left ankle and winced as the vocal home crowd screamed hip drop, leaving Grant, a Queensland player, to possibly decide between the Storm and the Maroons.

After all, Corrigan, a key Queensland forward, faced a suspension if charged with a hip drop tackle. Does Grant tell Asofa-Solomona to shut up and play-the-ball to take the bunker focus away from Carrigan, or does he stay quiet and hope Carrigan is sin binned? As it transpired, both Grant’s prayers were answered: Carrigan was sent from the field for 10 minutes but the Match Review Committee chose not to charge him, deeming the tackle not a classic hip-drop because the weight of his body hit the ground, not Asofa-Solomona’s leg.

The common factor in referees reacting to tackles resembling hip-drops is possible injury to the ball carrier. Yet when this is put to the NRL’s head of Football, Graham Annesley, he says: “The NRL has made it very clear to match officials and the match review committee that injury is only a factor to be considered once they form a view that an offence has been committed. Injury is not a reason for action by the officials in itself.”

Now, that is an answer worthy of the politician Annesley once was. Sure, referees have been told to ignore injury, but they don’t.

The culpability for hip-drop tackles begins with coaches who have instructed their players to tackle high to prevent the ball carrier offloading. The NRL has reacted by driving the problem not so much underground but close to it.

They began by punishing cannonball tackles where two defenders held the ball carrier erect and a third tackler speared in at his knees from the side. This certainly warranted punishment but now any tackle below the knee from the side with force risks being punished. When two 110kg players are twisting and turning to stop another of similar size from offloading the ball and their joints are swivelling beyond normal human range, the target area for the third defender coming in low can change. He is allowed to tackle from behind below the knee but not from the side with force.

Hence, coaches moved to the hip-drop, described by Annesley as when “defenders aim for the upper body where they initially grab, then twist their torso, and use their body weight to bring the attacker to ground. The physics of this action means the momentum of the tacklers body weight falling to the ground carries a high risk the defenders body may land directly on the legs of the attacker.”