I like this take by Eggy on the new hip drop knee drop ban, it's a fair and balanced view.
I looked at more examples of hip drop tackles, including the ones he provides, to get a better feel for it and why it carries such a high risk - it tends to trap the leg under the tackler and any movement from there backward is going to cause an overextension or potentially catastrophic bend of some joint or another.
As he says though, it's a natural movement when you're trying to pull someone down from behind. This is something that's going to have to be specifically coached out of players. Interesting that he says the NRL already banned it 6 years ago.
The more problematic one is the knee drop. How they're going to handle this especially with goal line defense where everyone is low and pretty much on the ground already as they tackle will be interesting to see. This could grind games to a halt and we seriously don't need more cards in the game either, nor more TMO interventions. For me there's not nearly the danger in the knee drop that we see in the hip drop, but it's the one that can have the bigger influence on how the game plays out.
He also echoes what I've been saying - you can't make the game safe. It is inherently a dangerous sport with split second contacts on huge targets moving at rapid speed and every participant has to accept that. Trying to make it completely safe is going to kill it.
