Fans at AAMI Stadium looked on in horror as Newcastle Knights second-rower, Alex McKinnon lay on the pitch almost lifeless with his neck badly damaged after he appeared to be speared to the ground, head first.
As it transpired, the injury was as bad as the tackle with McKinnon put in an induced coma and requiring major neck surgery - the 22 year old's rugby league playing days are definitely over. McKinnon was very lucky that his spinal cord was not damaged or severed - he would be a paraplegic as a result.
Storm players, Jordan McLean, Jesse and Kenny Bromwich are set to appear before an NRL judiciary hearing for their involvement in the tackle of McKinnon - the calls are growing for lengthy bans to send a message that such tackles will not be tolerated.
In my opinion, the NRL could have sent the message much earlier before such tackles happened, i.e. punishing offenders who commit spear tackles with 6 month bans worthy of the offence. Now, the NRL has to make an example of this and hand out punishments to the offenders while a player has to contemplate life outside football.
Hopefully, rugby union is watching and will realise that it needs to make a big step forward and impose hefty penalties on spear tacklers - already deemed a straight red card as we saw with Ma'a Nonu and Sam Warburton, however there needs to be a ban attached to it of a significant length of time (6 months at least).
Otherwise, we risk seeing young men paralysed as a result or even death on the field.
Why is it that sport has to wait for something bad to happen before they act?
No comments:
Post a Comment