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NRL referees simply not good enough

12th May, 2013
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Roar Guru
12th May, 2013
25
1050 Reads

The standard of refereeing this year has been, in my opinion, atrocious. There is no better example of this than the refereeing this weekend.

We’d be here all day if I decided to look at every single game so far this week. There have been howlers in nearly every single game played so far.

I, however, want to talk about Sunday’s game between the Titans and the Dragons; a game in which both teams have the right to feel hard done by had they tasted defeat.

St George Illawarra were hammered with a 12-6 penalty count. The Dragons’ discipline was poor no doubt, but it wasn’t two times as bad as the Titans’ discipline. The Titans got away with plenty of things that the Dragons got penalised for.

Apart from the lopsided penalty count, the decision to penalize Nathan Fien for doing exactly what Jonathan Thurston did on Friday night – stealing the ball from the play-the-ball when there was no dummy-half present – was baffling.

Shayne Hayne defended the decision by saying that there was no acting half when Thurston did it. Well acting half or not, I fail to see why a perfectly square Fien cannot dive onto the football when the dummy half is too slow to pick it up.

In addition to this, there was the decision to ignore a blatantly offside Dave Taylor as he intercepted the ball while defending on his try-line. It literally happened right in front of Shayne Hayne’s face.

Fortunately for the Dragons, this decision was cancelled out by an equally deplorable decision five minutes later at the other end. I am of course referring to the decision to deny the Titans a try for obstruction. This was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever seen.

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I probably wouldn’t be writing this article if games like this were isolated incidents – but they aren’t. Games like this happen all the time, and for a competition like the NRL, it simply will not do.

The professionalism of the players needs to be matched by referees. And I’m not just talking about big decisions.

The little things are being officiated poorly too. These are things that don’t create front page headlines but are important nonetheless.

So without further ado, I would like to present this list of issues that need fixing:

Strip or knock-on?
We desperately need some consistency on this issue.

When a player drops the ball in a tackle or stuffs up the play-the-ball, it seems like an almost completely random decision is made as to whether the ball was stripped or whether the ball was lost. It’s like a lottery.

The ball comes loose and everyone pauses to see whether we get a long or a short whistle sound. It’s ridiculous.

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I have seen plenty of correct rulings on this part of the game, but plenty more of them have been incorrect. Many times I have seen loose carries get rewarded with a penalty.

I’ve seen good hits dislodge the ball, only to have the tackler penalised for a strip.

On the other side of the coin, I have seen many strips go unnoticed.

Daniel Anderson needs to sit down with his senior referees and quickly define what is a knock on and what is a strip. This massive inconsistency is not up to NRL standard.

Forward passes from dummy half
This problem is not exclusive to dummy half. Plenty of blatant forward passes go unnoticed or ignored by referees and touchies in general play as well.

But the forward pass out of dummy half has become an epidemic.

From Cameron Smith to Cameron King and everyone in between, every single dummy half does it multiple times a game, and very few of them are called up on it.

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There really isn’t much else to say on this issue, especially because it should be one of the easiest things in rugby league to officiate. Just get it right. It’s that simple.

Obstruction
This is a tricky one. Obstruction is an issue that is very open to interpretation. It’s a naturally grey area, so consistency is going to be hard to come by.

It is for this reason that I do not want to go into obstruction rule interpretations or anything of that nature. I merely want to make a suggestion.

Keep it on the field and out of the video refs box. By allowing video refs to rule on obstruction, we are creating a whole new type of inconsistency in that ‘obstructions’ that would normally go unnoticed in general play are only being ruled upon when a try is scored.

This applies especially to tries with a lot of build up play. Let’s say a halfback runs behind his decoy runner and the ref doesn’t award a penalty.

The halfback passes to his five-eighth, who gives it out the back to the fullback, who throws a cut out ball to the winger who is in for a try in the corner.

Too many times we have seen exact situations like this occur, only for the try to be denied by a video ref who is overturning an obstruction ruling made by the on-field ref earlier in the play.

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Whether the ref made the right call or not is irrelevant. The fact is that had a try not been scored the original ruling would still apply and it would be play-on.

It is for this reason that video refs are not allowed to rule on forward passes. The same should apply to obstruction.

All NRL games are important, but if these sort of inconsistencies can happen in regular round NRL games then there is no reason that they can’t happen in Origin, finals, or even a grand final.

With Origin right around the corner, Daniel Anderson needs to fix all of this up. I would hate for my beloved Blues to be robbed blind again, just as I would hate for them to win at the expense of Queenslandbeing robbed blind.

I admit that being a referee is a tough and thankless job. As a former football ref (not at a high level so the pressure was a bit different to that which Shayne Hayne and company face every week), I get that perfection is unrealistic.

There will be mistakes. Referees, contrary to popular belief, are human too, and they are certainly not perfect.

But perfection is not what I’m asking for.

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The fact is that the current standard of refereeing is not acceptable. Too often we see games marred by poor officiating. At this level, it is simply not good enough.

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