The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Friday, April 17

LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 08: A message is shown on the big screen as a VAR check for a possible offside on a goal scored by Dominic Solanke of Tottenham Hotspur is carried out during the Carabao Cup Semi Final First Leg match between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on January 08, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images) | Getty Images Kia ora. Matty Flatt here, assistant to the Managing Editor here to close out a week of Hoddles sans-Fitzie ( come back to us Fitzie!!!

) Building on Dustin’s Hoddle from yesterday, it may surprise some of you to learn that I follow sports other than football. One of those sports is going through a bit of an identity crisis right now, and it’s thanks to changes in the sport’s rules. That sport is rugby league, where I am a long-suffering supporter of the Warriors in Australia’s (and New Zealand’s, I guess) NRL competition.

The NRL is arguably league’s version of the Premier League: though league is played in other places and competitions around the world, namely England, the NRL is probably considered the highest quality competition – cue loud protests from some of our British readers. Rugby league is in some ways similar to American football, whereby the team in possession has a certain number of “tackles” (kind of like a “down”) to advance the ball up the field before possession is turned over to the other team. The first of these aforementioned rule changes was implemented back in 2020, where instead of certain infringements around the tackle area (called the “ruck”) resulting in a penalty kick to advance the attacking team upfield, the referee would award “six again”, restarting the tackle count with the play continuing without halting.

The idea being was this would increase the speed of the game and keep things free-flowing, minimizing the stoppages generated from the referee blowing his whistle. (What I should add is the standard of refereeing around penalties was quite poor, meaning referees would often hesitate to blow their whistle for a penalty, but now have no problem awarding a six again. Sound familiar?