![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/4b6ee7dc2c6be6ba448206a186e864743608edd3.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Nathan Cleary suffered a horror leg injury in Sunday\u2019s preliminary final loss to Newcastle.\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n
We could get rid of the spear tackle because you can train someone to drive, rather than lift. We could get rid of the chicken wing tackle because you\u2019ve got to consciously grab someone\u2019s arm and pull it the wrong way. We could get rid of the grapple tackle because you\u2019ve got to consciously grab someone by the neck.<\/p>\n
Even the cannonball \u2013 you\u2019ve got to consciously dive at someone\u2019s knees while he\u2019s being held by two other players. <\/p>\n
Thankfully, we don\u2019t see much of those any more. But the hip drop? <\/p>\n
With how strong and powerful some players are these days, at some point a player will run through you, momentum will take your studs off the ground, and your body will naturally fall on the back of his legs.<\/p>\n
I think we can tell the difference between the intentional ones \u2013 there\u2019s not many of them any more \u2013 and the accidental ones where a player is just trying to make a tackle.<\/p>\n
I look at so many tackles these days, and I could make a case there is a hip-drop in a lot of tackles because of the way players fall. All you\u2019re trying to do is whatever you can to get the bloke to the ground.<\/p>\n
But because the player doesn\u2019t get injured, we just play on.<\/p>\n
I feel terribly sorry for Nathan Cleary<\/a>. We don\u2019t want to see him out of the game \u2013 he\u2019s the best player in the competition \u2013 but we\u2019ve got to understand this is a contact sport, and sometimes accidents happen. Everybody who plays the game understands that.<\/p>\n And I feel sorry for Crossland, who\u2019s been probably the first player sent off because of a hip-drop, and now he\u2019s been suspended for four weeks because of the outcome, not the action.<\/p>\n On Friday night, Victor Radley\u2019s tackle on Herbie Farnworth was a more traditional hip-drop<\/a>, and he got away with a fine \u2013 and can play in the grand final \u2013 because the player wasn\u2019t injured.<\/p>\n Toby Couchman was suspended for four weeks \u2013 but not sent off \u2013 for a hip-drop tackle that snapped J\u2019maine Hopgood\u2019s ACL<\/a> and ended his season in round three.<\/p>\n The sizes of players is another factor.<\/p>\n Imagine an Addin Fonua-Blake<\/a> or a Tyson Frizell<\/a> running as hard as they possibly can at Reed Mahoney<\/a>. If Mahoney makes as good contact as he possibly can, he might win that tackle 50 per cent of the time. <\/p>\n But the other 50 per cent, they\u2019re probably going to be dragging him through, which means with momentum, Mahoney\u2019s body is naturally going to end up behind them, and then possibly on the back of their legs. You can\u2019t stop that.<\/p>\n Cleary threw a dummy, ran through Crossland, and then momentum took Crossland onto the back of Cleary\u2019s legs.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an inevitability and I don\u2019t know if it can ever be fully eradicated from the game. <\/p>\n So we need to come up with a better system because it\u2019s not fair one bloke gets suspended for four weeks and will miss a grand final, when two nights earlier someone did the same thing and only got fined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hip drop tackle has always been around, and I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to ever be able…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-910603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}