PRESS RELEASE

MANU SAMOA RUGBY WORLD CUP 2007

TOUR REPORT 13

Date 21 September 2007

Jones considers league as union softens up

NANTES - The return of "The Chiropractor" Brian Lima to the Samoa lineup against England on Sunday has reignited the debate about tackling in rugby.

Lima's coach and former All Black Michael Jones lamented this week that the game had become "too sanitised" and was frustrated that his players had been forced to tone down their physical approach after a crackdown from World Cup organizers.

Jones said the game was turning so soft that he would encourage his son to play rugby league instead.

The opposite view is that challenges such as Lima's hit on South African Andre Pretorius are highly dangerous, have no place in the game and are the real reason why parents might want to steer their children away.

Lima has earned a justified reputation for hard tackling, even among the big hitters of the Pacific islands, and his destruction of airborne Springbok first five-eighths Derick Hougaard was one of the iconic images of the last World Cup.

So, perhaps it was understandable he would come out all guns blazing as a replacement against the same opponents two weeks ago.

His first action proved to be his last as a tackle that was more of a flying headbutt somehow did not cause Pretorius any major damage but knocked Lima unconscious. He returned immediately to the bench and was forced to miss the next game against Tonga, his first absence in five World Cups.

That he escaped any punishment or a subsequent citing, especially in the light of Schalk Burger's initial four-match ban for a late hit in the same match, provoked outrage in South Africa.

Others of a more neutral persuasion were also unimpressed.

"Everybody loves Lima...but the sugary sweetness with which he was welcomed on and waved off the pitch within minutes cloaks the reality of Samoa," former England first five-eighths Stuart Barnes wrote in the Sunday Times.

"There is an element of political correctness in the way the rugby world allows the savage swinging arms which are the trademark of the South Pacific."

Jones, unsurprisingly, sees it differently. "You've got to take the brutality out of the game and I'm all for that but there is a danger of it being over-sanitised," he said.

"Traditionally, Samoans hit hard with a lot of impact. Bodies are flying but the collisions often look far worse than they are. There's no malice in a lot of our tackling.

"We are having to change our style, to tone it down a bit. It goes against the grain. This is part of our DNA, we are wired to tackle hard, but you just can't afford to now.

"It's getting to the point where I'd think about telling my son to go play rugby league. It's getting to the point where I might well have opted to play rugby league myself."

And as far as trying to tone down Lima, Jones recognises a pointless task when he sees one. "We trust him, he's been playing this game longer than most of us have," he said. "I'm not going to change his tackling at this stage."

Courtesy of NZ Hearld