Rugby league-Experts want lifting tackle ban after neck break

By Ian Ransom MELBOURNE, April 3 (Reuters) - Australia's National Rugby League is under huge pressure to place a blanket ban on lifting tackles after Newcastle Knight Alex McKinnon suffered a broken neck in a match in Melbourne last week. McKinnon was slammed into the turf as part of a heavy three-man tackle that saw Melbourne Storm prop Jordan McLean suspended for seven matches at a judicial hearing in Sydney on Wednesday. McLean, who lifted McKinnon into the air before he was driven into the turf with his arms pinned back, was found guilty of a 'dangerous throw'. Pundits have slammed the NRL for hypocrisy, however, pointing to the many similar tackles that go unpunished in the world's richest rugby league competition. The sight of NRL players, often second or third to a contest, grabbing an opponent's leg to halt their momentum before lifting them off the ground to complete a bone-jarring tackle is common, but policing of the tackles is inconsistent. With McKinnon remaining in hospital and facing the prospect of never walking again, sports medicine experts have demanded the NRL act to prevent another catastrophe. "I'd be very surprised to see if there wasn't some change to come of it," Sports Medicine Australia CEO Nello Marino told Reuters on Thursday. "It's very easy to say it's just a horrible accident, it's just a freak, and it probably won't happen again, and we'll just get on with our lives but the reality is, and history tells us, that's not likely. "And I just don't think it's acceptable for us to say, this only happens once in a while. We don't want it to happen at all." TACKLE REVIEW SMA, the country's leading organisation for sports science and medicine, has called on the NRL to outlaw all lifting tackles to eliminate the grey areas in interpretation that both on-field referees and post-match review officials struggle with. The tolerance for multiple players rushing into tackle an individual in rugby league and other high-impact football codes amplified the chance of serious injury, Nello said. "There needs to be some sort of a review of the tackles themselves, they need to be clear about what is a safe tackle and we accept that changing rules is not going to eliminate all injury from these situations, however, the idea is trying to minimise these as much as possible," he added. "When you've got force coming down of that size of three men on one, it's clearly going to increase the risk significantly." Many NRL players have sympathised with McLean, regarding McKinnon's injury as a tragic accident rather than the result of a dangerous tackle. "To be fair, it happens so quick, it's hard to pinpoint and blame Jordan McLean for what's happened," Anthony Minichiello, captain of NRL team Sydney Roosters, told reporters on Thursday. "I think it was just an awful accident that we don't like to see in our game." Professor Caroline Finch from Monash University's Injury Research Unit dismissed the idea that bad luck had anything to do with McKinnon's injury. "There was a very clear mechanism of injury there where the player was pins down, head first," she told News Ltd media. "We know that sort of event leads to injuries and puts pressures on the neck and on the spine. We've known about that in the past. "So we should be really enforcing the rules around that so it doesn't happen again." (Editing by John O'Brien)