Players getting sent off and wouldn't even have been a penalty 20 years ago

Gale today prime example a little touch on the leg

20 years ago you had to nearly take a players head off for a red

Seeing penalties for players getting dumped normal to the ground ( lineham tonight good example )

If its not careful the game will turn into touch rugby

I agree, but not much they can do about it. Sport is changing and rather than accepting the risks and treating sportsmen like modern day gladiators, they've opened the sport up to litigation. Player welfare is rightly paramount now, so the 'good' old days of enforcers and players carrying on and taking the next hit after being knocked out are over.

Gale deserved that card though. It was just daft. If he blocks it, it's treated as being played at, so it's a high risk move. Players usually just tackle the kicker or get in front so it's ruled a charge down. I don't see what else the referees can do really? If they give a yellow they'd face mass criticism for that too.

I get you are upset seeing your team get absolutely mullered at home yet again but the Gale sending off was absolutely spot on.

Nothing much the ref could do, normally you can charge down by diving at the kicking leg but going in at pace with the leg and studs up is a pretty massive brain fart, Gale won't try that again maybe with the weather it was a brain freeze.

In my opinion Gale can't have any complaints with the laws of the game as they stand now.

Gale would have been sent off 10 years ago for what he did . It would probably been just acceptable in MMA !

I mean I get what you're saying, would love to see the shoulder charge come back and more fights but that was a straight red every day of the week.

I don't think I've ever seen a player attack the kicker with his studs up like that. What on earth was he thinking? You could see him panicking trying to get Lomax back to his feet.

I don't think there was anything malicious in it and was going for the ball but it was a mistake to attempt it.

Class player though and hope he has a good season for Hull.

You can't attack the knee like that in most MMA rule sets. You can strike the lower leg or the thigh with the shin, knee or top of the foot but not with the sole of the foot in that position.

Glad you said that DG. I thought exactly the same.

While you can argue the game is more sterile than it used to be Gale’s ‘attempt to trap the ball’ as he has said on Twitter was a red all day long and even in the good ol’ days

Which competition rulesets say you can't? Cos you can in unified rules, which the ufc uses, see Jon Jones doing oblique kicks to people's knees for the first half of the last decade.