The NRL is on track for its most dangerous hip-drop season yet, with 99 hip-drop incidents being reviewed in the opening seven rounds of 2023.
NRL head of elite football Graham Annesley said the onus was on clubs and coaches to coach the dangerous technique out of players because “at the moment, all the data is heading in the wrong direction”.
“I’m not a coach, I can’t go to training sessions and tell players this is how you avoid these sorts of tackles. I can point out what is not a charge and what is a charge, and the rest of it is in the hands of the people who prepare the players,” Annesley said.
“We have to coach the players out of this. I don’t subscribe to the theory that’s often thrown around that players have been coached to do this. I think it’s a technique that has developed to try to bring players to the ground that needs to be undeveloped. They need to be given techniques to avoid this happening.”
Annesley said it was in the best interest of clubs to coach the technique out of players, not just because it keeps them from being sanctioned but because, to date, more matches have been lost due to this type of tackle than any other form of foul play.
While hip-drop politics have plagued the game since the sin-binning of Cronulla’s Dale Finucane and the Warriors’ Marata Niukore in round five, Annesley remained steadfast that the spate of sin-binnings and charges is not the result of a crackdown. Of the 99 incidents reviewed in 2023, just 11 have resulted in a charge.
“This is not new. It is not a 2023 phenomenon. This has been happening for several years … clubs were advised of this type of action and this type of outcome three years ago, and here we are still talking about it, and still dealing with it,” Annesley said.
“This has been an ongoing attempt to get this type of tackle out of the game in the same way that the match review committee in the NRL, over decades now, have attempted to rid the game of other actions that are dangerous to players … and at the moment all of the data is heading in the wrong direction, and it’s not because we are taking any closer look at these sorts of incidents. They just keep happening.”
The figures, which are on track to more than double that of the 2022 season, don’t include incidents in round eight, including Payne Haas’ controversial tackle on Parramatta’s Reagan Campbell-Gillard which left him with a groin injury which will sideline him for at least eight weeks.
Players and coaches alike have called the clampdown on the tackle confusing, but Annesley said the signs of a hip-drop were the same for every charge, and if clubs were confused about what constitutes the dangerous tackle, they could reach out to the NRL for certainty. To date, no clubs have contacted the NRL to do just that.
“I understand the frustration of it, but there’s a difference between frustration and confusion. And people keep saying ‘we’re confused about what’s a hip drop’. It’s not confusing, just take the time to understand it,” Annesley said.
