By STEVE MASCORD
SYLVAIN Houles and Joel Tomkins, the coaches of Super League’s French clubs, have come together to plead with the competition to speed up rucks and eliminate the wrestling next season.
“It’s something I hate about English rugby league,” Houles told rugbyleaguehub.com Long Reads in Toulouse this week.
Catalans’ Tomkins has previously spoken out against spoiling tactics at the play-the-ball and the French-domiciled pair will take their views to a meeting of Super League coaches in two weeks.
Speaking in his office at Stade Gilbert Brutus, the Dragons coach says the success of the European competition expanding from 12 to 14 teams in 2026 “probably depends a lot how the games are refereed next year.
“If it’s a really slow ruck, then we’ll probably see a similar game to last season. And if the ruck’s sped up a bit, we’ll probably see a bit more free-flowing rugby with the fatigue element in the game.
“I don’t think there’ll be a coach in Super League who doesn’t want the rucks to be quicker.
“You could pretty much see in all the post match interviews and press conference last (season) … some of the games were pretty slow.”
Houles did not try to hide his disdain for the interpretations around the play-the-ball in Super League over the past decade.
“When I started coaching in France, we were playing quicker than Super League because Thierry Alibert was refereeing and he didn’t want any wrestling,” the coach of newly-promoted Olympique said.
“Every time you get tackled, he’d say ‘move’. There was no wrestling, no ‘dominant’, no surrender tackle so it was really quick. It makes … it was tough but it was a fast game.
“Super League has been wrestling, wrestling and unfortunately the best team at it have always been champion – except maybe this year, Hull KR wasn’t too much.
“But before that Saints, Wigan, even the Catalans when they made the grand final – they were the best at it.
“And it’s dirty. It makes it dirty, the ruck. There’s hands on ball, pushing, shoving and the referee never stops that.
“You try to replicate that and we do. We’ve been doing that because you see that in the English game. Otherwise it’s faster, it’s unbalanced.
“We’ve got a meeting in a couple of weeks where we can talk about that. But it has to come from the referees. It has to be like, ‘what’s the philosophy?.
“We feel that in England the philosophy is more on defence. That’s what it looks like, anyway.
“In Australia, it’s a lot more oriented on attack. I’m a big believer, rugby league, it’s more attack.
“(Fans) come to watch big hits … you do like watching your team defending hard, defending the line with passion.
“But I do believe you come to watch spectacular tries, speed, pass and great skills.”
Tomkins does not believe he’ll get much pushback from the other 12 coaches.
“I think we’d all be happy with consistency, first of all, in how the rucks are policed,” the former Wigan and international star said.
“And on the back of that I think we’d all like to see a quicker ruck. Just look at the NRL, where that game’s going.
“It’s built on the back of quicker ruck speed, fatigue in the game and that creates opportunities when you’ve got the ball.
“It might take 15, 20, 25 minutes to build that fatigue in a game because they’re so fit but that is the aim of the game: to build that fatigue and then create opportunities.
“You do that by building the ruck up a little bit.
“I think it’s a better spectacle if the ruck’s a bit quicker so hopefully mate … but if it’s not, we’ll adapt to whichever way the ruck is policed.”