Think NRL referees are bad now?

 

Roar Guru

By mushi, 24 Mar 2010 mushi is a Roar Guru

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 NRL, nrl referees, Rugby League

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In the world of sports, if you had a graph where one axis was recognition of contribution and the other accountability, you would have referees sitting close to the bottom on recognition and way out to the left on the accountability.

It is a case of all the criticism, with none of the praise.

Meanwhile, sports journalists would be the opposite, nestled high on their perch of recognition with the comfortable safety net of knowing accountability is not a burden they have to bear.

Publicly regarded journalists belittle the performance of a referee only to be told the man in the middle got the ruling right. Does this bring forth an apology?

No, of course not, that would require treating the referee as social equal. Rather, the criticism takes a different tangent: “it is a stupid rule?”

So now we want our referees not to enforce the rules of the game but to be some great arbiter of justice, a wise King Solomon of leather and chalk.

Five minutes later, when a penalty is given in a manner deemed inconsistent with one from last week, it is now asked why they just can’t follow the simple rule book.

They are now a cowboy who thinks they are bigger than the game.

Of course, there would never be any mention of how the penalty from last week was an error and roundly criticised by all. We yearn for yesteryear when referees valued consistency and thus kept on simply repeating their mistakes week after week.

Refereeing successfully appears to be impossible, with those publicly judging you moving the goal posts for success with more speed and agility than Hayne and Slater combined.

Maybe you get lucky for a few games, but eventually you will fail.

What is very odd is that once the dust settles and the siren has sounded, the only people held to a perfect standard are the officials.

A touch judge misses a blatant forward pass, he spends the next few weeks in reserve grade with question marks placed on his career prospects. His bosses are questioned and the game is descending into a quagmire of disgrace.

A footballer, however, murders a try through a mental error, lack of application or just freak bad luck, and you see him go around next week, with fans cheering and commentators gushing.

Yes, mistakes get made. Some on the weekend are an example.

But regardless of the systems put in place, mistakes will always be made because we are reliant on imperfect people to execute a perfect job.

We deride the quality of refereeing today, but it is a giant leap forward from what we previously had. Rulings are far more consistent and our criticisms have become pettier.

Forward passes, slight of hand deception of the referee, knock-ons in the ruck, off-sides, on-kicks, favouritism so pronounced (but I believe unintentional), you wondered why he didn’t have a 14 on his back and a jersey, and such wild inconsistencies between referees’ interpretations that it felt like watching a different sport each week.

That’s without even delving into episodes, now consigned to folklore, like 7th tackles in Grand Finals, sin binning a guy who was on lying on the ground for being punched, or distracting the ref whilst drop punting goal line drop outs in the wet.

Anyone regretting the decline in refereeing either hasn’t watched a lot of rugby league or has a very poor memory.

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