Panthers coach Ivan Cleary has taken a not-so-subtle dig at NRL head office after his side became the latest to be embroiled in a hip-drop tackle controversy.
Hooker Soni Luke was put on report and binned for his tackle on Wests Tigers forward Alex Twal in the 69th minute as the game hung in the balance on Saturday night.
Penrith lost the game and Luke will almost certainly be the 16th player this season charged for a hip-drop tackle, with the number of those booked for the offence skyrocketing this season.
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But Cleary believes Luke’s only option to avoid sanction was to let go in the tackle, which he claimed goes against every footballer’s instincts.
“I’ve seen a few like that now and the only way you can avoid it is to let go… how do you tell a footballer to let go? That’s my question.
“The Ezra Mam one last week, the only way he can avoid that is to let go.
“The game makes the decisions so I dunno (on where the game is heading in regards to hip-drop tackles).
“I hear the same questions each week and no one has got the answers.”
Penrith captain Isaah Yeo believes there is a clear difference between the “bad ones” and the contentious hip-drop penalties.
“You just have to have an awareness, I guess, but it’s a split-second thing,” he said.
“Like you can feel like you’re in a really good position and then all of a sudden you’re in a bad one just like that, it’s a hard one.
“I feel like you know the bad ones (compared to) the 50-50 ones. The ones that really hurt someone and you can tell, they’re a lot different to these little ones that are going on at the moment.”
Cleary then went further and said he feels sorry for the referees who are only acting on the directives from their bosses.
“I agree with Yeo, hip-drops are a bit like crusher tackles, when they were first introduced they look a lot different to what they look now,” he said.
“Somehow we blend them all in together as the same, I don’t know how you tell a player to let go deliberately, it’s just not in any players makeup and it’s just not an instinctive thing to do.
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“I feel for the referees actually and whoever is making these calls because they’ve been told and they’re doing it.”
Cooper Cronk believes the tackle can only be coached out and it will tackle several weeks for players to learn new habits.
“The fact is there is now a punishment for a player getting a hip-drop wrong in a game,” Cronk said on Fox League.
“Ivan Cleary said ‘what do you want the player to miss?’ Well no, you need a technical change.
“At the moment that’s the issue, they brought in (the crackdown) in Round 8 with sin bins, suspensions. You’ve got to give coaches time to technically change that tackle.
“Because now they’re going to have to fall side on without trying to roll around the back and that’s going to take time to adjust and the only way you can do that is through practice.
“So with confusion and not understanding it, unfortunately this is going to be around for another couple of weeks until repetitions at training get done.”
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