Both Trent Robinson and Shane Flanagan have weighed into the debate on concussions and kick-offs after Mosese Suli’s horror knockout in the first play of the Anzac Day match between St George Illawarra and the Sydney Roosters on Thursday.
Suli was sparked by a head-on-head collision with Jared Waerea-Hargreaves, in isolation an accident but a scene seen regularly this year as players return restarts with venom and gangs of tacklers attempt to engage an upright opponent.
“It’s a really hard one because I love kick-offs because they set a statement to how we wanted to play today,” said Easts boss Robinson.
“But we don’t want to see that for Mosese.
“I think we can see that we’re getting to the point where it needs to shift. I think they tried to do it through the short kick-offs, but it’s not enough.
“Field position is still a really big part of the game, so you need to get down there. I think we’re getting closer to a change soon.”
Dragons counterpart Flanagan lamented the effect on his side as well but questioned how the league could counteract it without changing the fabric of the sport.
“It’s a terrible way to start a game, and we did miss him because he’s powerful from the back of the field,” he said.
“We couldn’t win that battle from the back of the field and we were always kicking from inside our 40.
“We want to play this really tough gladiator sport, and we want to get down there – especially off kick-offs – and have really good contact with front-rowers.
“But we see it too often. I don’t know the answer, but we see it too often.
“When it happens to one of your players, it’s not nice to see. I don’t know how we stop it, unless we start with a play the ball, and that’s not something I’d like to see.
“In the modern game, we can’t have these concussions. We need to look after the players.
“The short dropouts and all that have probably changed it a little bit, but I don’t know the answer.”
Shane Flanagan. (Photo by Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images)
Flanno takes aim at Sharks
Flanagan later fanned the flames ahead of his reunion with Cronulla, declaring the Sharks are a side he is “really interested in beating”.
And he didn’t stop there, clipping the Sharks for their failure to win an NRL premiership since the club’s first and only title was delivered back when he was head coach in 2016.
Flanagan had the perfect smokescreen after St George Illawarra were pumped 60-18 by the Sydney Roosters on Thursday as the focus quickly turned to his return to Shark Park on Sunday week.
The 58-year-old coach was deregistered and moved on as Cronulla coach on the eve of the 2019 season after it emerged he had breached the terms of an NRL ban handed out in 2014.
John Morris and current coach Craig Fitzgibbon have followed in his footsteps, with neither mentor able to move the Sharks beyond the second week of finals.
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But rather than downplay his return to Cronulla’s home ground, Flanagan leaned into the occasion as the Dragons were reeling from their Anzac Day annihilation at the hands of the Roosters.
“It (the Sharks game) has been marked in the calendar for a while,” he said.
“It won’t be an emotional week, no, I won a comp there. I don’t think they’ve won one since, have they?
“My job is to get these boys up, whether we’re playing the Sharks, I need to get the boys up to where we were a few weeks ago.
“It’s not about me, I don’t care about me and I don’t want it to be about me, I want it to be about the team and the club.”
Flanagan insisted he had moved on with his life and he will need his Dragons side to regroup, too, after an encouraging run of form was brought to an abrupt end by the Roosters.