“I think we’ll lose people” – Hull KR coach on effects of punishing ‘accidents’

Hull KR head coach Willie Peters has revealed his thoughts on the first two rounds of Super League and how the stricter head contact laws have been applied and the Australian has urged caution in the process.

Across the two Hull KR games this season there have been a total of two red cards and five yellow cards which has amounted to 12 games in bans, albeit only one of those match bans has gone to a KR player.

At the weekend Hull KR play Salford and ahead of the game, Willie Peters has spoken to the press urging the need for referees and lawmakers to be “careful” in how they dish out cards.

Peters explained: “We need to be very careful that we’re not giving red cards out for the sake of it. It affects the product, it affects the game, it affects not having your best players on the field, it affects the spectacle.”

Despite his call for caution, he maintained the necessity for action and underlined that player safety has always and will always be paramount, but noted that issues went too far on the weekend, which was a clear reference to the controversial Nu Brown red card for an accidental head contact.

Peters continued: “You need to make sure that you’re protecting the players first and foremost. So again, I’ll say it, if there’s a swinging arm around someone’s head, that’s a no-no. It always has been, and it needs to be.

“But obviously, we’ve had some situations on the weekend. I was vocal earlier on about the fact that we’re going to have accidents. People are going to have accidents on a footy field. We saw that in the weekend.”

Since the Brown red card, the RFL have backtracked and confirmed the Kiwi international will not be suspended and that a meeting of coaches and then players will take place today.

“Young kids might go the opposite way” – Hull KR boss makes plea over harsh punishment

That meeting between the head coaches and the RFL was something that Peters alluded to and he complimented the RFL on their swift decision to try and correct issues.

One thing that he kept underlining was that accidents cannot be punished or reacted to too heavily, something that clearly happened on Friday with Nu Brown.

The Hull KR coach went as far to suggest that overreacting to such incidents will turn fans away, Peters fearing that young kids might even leave the game which could be massively detrimental to the sport in the long term.

“We’ve got our coaches meeting and obviously the RFL are putting things in place to make sure that we’re heading in the right direction,” the Australian said.

“We’ll know more this afternoon, but we certainly can’t react to accidents, that’s for sure, because we will lose too many people watching our game. I think we’ll lose people, young kids might go the opposite way.

“Number one for us as a sport is to make sure that we minimise concussions and player safety is number one. All us coaches back that a million percent, but we just need to be mindful that we don’t have what happened on the weekend, that we don’t react to situations like that because it’s not good.”