There's no place for jackals and crocodiles in rugby jungle

I DON’T watch enough David Attenborough – frankly his droning voice is my go-to remedy for insomnia – to know if jackals and crocodiles happily coexist in some far-flung ecosystem but I do know they are inextricably linked in the jungle that is a rugby breakdown.

- BRENDAN GALLAGHER

And not for the good. If you allow, nay encourage the jackal, the crocodile and his death roll will surely not be far behind. And then it’s carnage. What is it with these bloody creatures? The caterpillar is another that has come close to destroying our glorious game. A curse on them all.

As previously discussed in this column, jackaling should never ever have been allowed in the first place and indeed wasn’t until the game lost its mind a few years back. When stripped down to its component parts, jackaling is old fashioned preventing release, handling in a ruck, which for very good reason was outlawed seemingly forever and a day.

But, more recently for reasons that remain elusive, it is permitted, and its purveyors lionised and rewarded with big salaries and cult status. Demonstrate the ability to coil up into an unnatural position and somehow get a fleeting hand on the ball as the attacking team try and shovel it back and you become a hero as you earn your team an endless procession of priceless penalties. Precisely what for I don’t know.

It comes with its own challenges physically. I’m not saying jackals are not brave and don’t warrant top dollar. The jackal puts him or herself in a horrible, vulnerable, hard-to-defend position with all sorts of hideous strains going through ankles, knees, groin, lower back, ribs and neck. And that’s when simply confronting legal efforts to shift you off the ball.