New rules have been announced this week about how Super League referees deal with dissent and certain tackles.

They are looking to clamp down on grapple tackles, high tackles and dissent, and referees will also call dominant tackles for the first time.

It won't take effect at National League level just yet but we coaches had a meeting at the start of the season with referees when we were given a document about what they were trying to clamp down on.

The grapple tackle is a dangerous one and the way the athletes are built it is easy to break someone's neck, or they can damage the brain with whiplash when being thrown on to their back.

Similarly, picking up legs in the tackle is a dangerous way of doing things -- and it is good they are clamping down on this.

The referees need to be realistic with it, though. When players get upended it's not always deliberate and they need to recognise when it is.

If you're doing a dive on the floor to make a quicker play-the-ball, what they are saying is the referee will now call 'dominant' and the defenders can get down on the floor with them and slow them up.

We don't want to see blokes diving on the floor. Yes, you might go lower sometimes to avoid getting pushed back into the in-goal area or carried into touch.

This is definitely not what we work towards. We want our players to be aggressive carrying the ball into the tackle and push through, although some teams do coach players to find the floor.

With the ten-metre rule in place, the quicker you play-the-ball, the harder it is for the defending team to retreat the required distance, which can lead to penalties for offside.

However, I believe the defending team should be able to get down and work the tackle to slow it down.

I've worked with a team in the past where we have tried to apply diving into tackles right from the start but we don't coach it that way now.

The more control you have in the tackle is really important. If you're looking to find the floor early you can get a two to three second play-the-ball, when the average time taken is around four to six seconds. If done repeatedly, that can impact on your defensive systems through fatigue due to the build up of lactic acid.

What happens to us quite a lot is the players get tackled and then they are held by the collar so the defender has control of their head and can push it down. That happened quite a lot in one game and our players had to pull their shirts back over their heads before they could play the ball.

Some of that was down to the fit of our shirts which were quite big. We have since replaced those with some tighter fitting shirts which should eliminate that problem.

We wore them for the first time at Keighley and they are a lot better. For next season, we are even looking to get them skin-tight and get rid of the collars to give the opposition less to hold on to.

It's difficult at this level because at Super League, the players have squad numbers and get the shirts virtually made to measure. However, as the shirts are numbered one to 17 this has to reflect the player's position, otherwise they could have their own shirt and you could get them virtually spray-on like Bradford and Leeds.

As for the players, I don't think Foxy and Potter would mind the tight fit because it means they could show off their magnificent physiques.

Updated: 08:52 Wednesday, April 20, 2005