Coaches left their annual gabfest feeling frustrated, with nothing resolved.

Manly's Geoff Toovey asked why the meeting could not decide on something, but it meandered to an end with no conclusion.

This is typical of meetings of head coaches held over the past 30 years.

In 1987, NSWRL coaching director Paul Broughton convened a meeting of  the head coaches but was warned that it was not a properly constituted body of the league and therefore decisions could not be recognised.

A few years later, St George's then coach Brian Smith organised a meeting, with myself as chair, but again, with some of the powerful club chief executives instructing their coaches not to attend, it was soon disbanded.

The NRL's head of football, Todd Greenberg, boasted that he had a full attendance of coaches at last week's gathering but with two on speakerphone (the Rabbitohs' Michael Maguire and Cowboys Paul Green), the Raiders' Ricky Stuart asked why they could not all be on the blower.

That's the way it has always worked. No coach likes to see another advantaged. Not surprisingly, Greenberg has made it clear the coaches will not dictate rule changes.

The Broncos' Wayne Bennett was very vocal on the practice of players lifting the leg of the ball carrier.

The number of lifting tackles has doubled in the past 10 years, with Newcastle's Alex McKinnon seriously injured in a match in March.

Coaches are still spooked by it. The Bulldogs' Des Hasler, while not justifying lifting tackles, gently suggested its increase had been a response to the ban on the cannonball tackle.

The cannonball tackle was not such a scourge that it had to be outlawed. Sure there were some vicious ones that could have resulted in the player suspended, but most were a simple attempt to pin the legs of the ball carrier.

The coaches were shown 2014 vision of cannonball tackles, where some were penalised and others weren't. The Storm's Craig Bellamy suggested that the penalised ones occurred early in the season when referees were attuned to the ban, while the unpenalised ones occurred later in the season.

Referees boss Tony Archer disagreed, arguing that the third man in the tackle had adjusted to a higher target zone above the knees of the ball carrier. Hmmm.

Statistics were also presented showing that tries, line breaks and offloads had all decreased but the meeting ended without reaching consensus on what to do about it.

Then followed two days of meetings of the competition committee, which includes current coaches such as the Roosters' Trent Robinson and Bennett.

Statistics were further analysed, including play-the-ball speeds, where it was revealed there were more slow play-the-balls and fewer fast play-the-balls in 2014 than in previous years.

Bennett again became agitated at this revelation, arguing that wrestling was to blame and it had been tolerated for too long.

He has been a long-term campaigner for fast play-the-balls, arguing that if referees quicken up the ruck and reduce the number of three-man tackles, there will be more ball movement.

But "with all due respect" (the 2014 cliche) to the seven-times premiership coach, faster play-the-balls do not necessarily translate to more ball movement.

The "skinny coach" knows this, having forced fast rucks on Super League and then revelled in the sight of his monster forwards and giant wingers travelling one-out to win the 1998 trophy.

No statistics were produced at the coaches and competition meetings of the time spent dancing, that is, from the moment of contact between the first defender and ball carrier to the point where the tackle was timed.

Referees can scream at the tacklers to roll off the ball carrier in order to produce super fast rucks, but if defenders are holding up the attacker before he plays the ball, it cancels out any campaign for quick rucks.

Referees are calling "held" more quickly with three-man tackles, possibly to stop anything dangerous coming out of a leg lift, but this undermines any opportunity for an offload.

The successful teams last year had the lowest offload rates.

If referees speed up the ruck, it will be counter-productive, resulting in less ball movement and more dummy half running and no big guy, other than Canterbury's James Graham, passing the ball.

The big teams will again dominate, which takes you back to 1998 and the start of this column.