Rugby league great James Graham urges the NRL to take a drastic approach and ’embarrass players’ in a bid to ban game acting from the game: ‘Send them to hospital and they will stop ‘
- The issue of game acting has long been an issue in rugby league
- James Graham believes the NRL must take drastic action to eliminate it
- He called for players who remain down to be forced off the field
Former NRL star James Graham has urged the league to ’embarrass the players into conforming’ in a bid to ban game acting from the game.
The problem of players milking a contact in an attempt to win a penalty resurfaced on Saturday during Canberra’s shock 20-14 victory over the Broncos at Suncorp Stadium.
Brisbane star halfback Adam Reynolds and Raiders second rower Elliott Whitehead both appeared to want to earn a penalty by staying down.
And Graham has proposed a drastic solution to curb the practice of the game, calling on the NRL to ’embarrass players’ in front of their peers.
“Bring a stretcher and let them go on a stretcher,” he said Triple M’s ‘Sunday Sin Bin’.
James Graham has called on the NRL to take drastic action to curb game acting
‘Imagine that, [Elliott] Whitehead stays down and the umpire blows time off and the medicab comes and they lay down and the neck brace arrives and gently wanders, send them to the hospital and they’ll stop.”
Graham, a veteran of 186 NRL games, admitted officials had a losing battle in their quest to ban diving from the game because players “know they’re going to gain a competitive advantage.”
He added: ‘We are a product of our environment, so players know the environment, they know how to gain a competitive advantage. You take it away.
“I think now what we have to do if we want to solve this problem, which is such a problem, taking players away, it doesn’t matter what it is at the discretion of the referee.
“If the referee calls a penalty it’s a penalty, if he or she doesn’t do it it doesn’t matter how long you stay down or if it’s a sin box it’s at the next stoppage.
Adam Reynolds looks to stay down to win a penalty during the Broncos’ 20-14 loss to Canberra at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday night
Raiders second rower Elliott Whitehead also appeared to be trying to milk a penalty
“We’re going to miss cases of foul play.”
Reynolds himself has spoken out about the need to eliminate game acting from the game, suggesting that rewarding players who stayed down to win a penalty risked setting a dangerous precedent.
“What I’m most frustrated with is that we’re encouraging players to lie down, and that doesn’t look good for the game,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2021.
“People dive and milk it for what it is, and that’s more worrying than the accidents [to the head and neck].’