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Reviewing the game clock will prevent teams being robbed

Winners are grinners as Young Tonumaipea scores. (AAP Image/Action Photographics, Brett Crockford)
Roar Pro
17th April, 2014
19

No other club should ever have to lose in the fashion that St. George Illawarra did on Monday night, and the NRL should immediately act to ensure it does not.

The simplest way to do this is to allow the video referee to review how much time is left in a half of football.

For those who didn’t see it, the Melbourne Storm, trailing by two, appeared to sneak in one last play-the-ball, before the full-time siren, only to score on the last play.

Replays, however, showed that the siren went just before the Storm player played the ball, and the Storm ended up winning a game they should not have.

The Dragons won’t be getting the competition points but that still doesn’t make what happened right.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time we have seen this occur this year.

Just one week earlier in a Round 5 match between the Manly Sea Eagles and the Wests Tigers, after the half-time siren should have sounded, Manly player Peta Hiku played the ball and from the ensuing play Jamie Lyon scored.

In that game, there was a technical fault where the half-time siren did not sound automatically, so the referees were unsure when the half had finished.

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However, as a pissed off Robbie Farah put it: “that isn’t good enough!”

He is right.

I was going to write this very column after the Round 5 incident from the Manly versus Wests game, but held off, thinking “I doubt I’ll ever see that again.”

Well, now we have seen it again, and it cost a club a win that was rightfully theirs.

The most frustrating thing in both cases is that it is so easy to check whether the right decision was made.

The video referee needs to be able to review whether time has expired.

We review just about everything else in the game, it is ludicrous to think that we cannot review this too.

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In 2014, with all the technology available to us, it is possible to review whether time has elapsed.

In the NFL, where the clock plays a much bigger part of the game than it does in league, the clock is reviewed at least once a match for various reasons and is often reset to show the correct time.

That may seem pedantic to some, but it shows that the NFL understands the ramifications of losing even a second of game time.

In both games the clock could have been reviewed.

In the Round 5 match, it was plain to everyone except the referees that the siren should have sounded: the crowd knew; the players knew; as did all of us watching at home.

The Monday night match may have been harder to review, yet clearly it is possible, because the NRL has confirmed that the play-the-ball occurred after the game had finished.

The current rules do not permit the referees to review this, and the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that the video referee does not have audio on replay.

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Yet none of this should matter if they have access to the official game clock, which, as the officials in control of the game, they should.

There has been some commentary that ensuring the broadcaster’s clock is in sync with the stadium and official clock would help, but surely that is just an unnecessary complication.

Only the official clock need be relied upon, with the stadium clock being linked to that, which should not be a problem because the clock should be operated at the ground anyway.

These avenues should be explored by the NRL.

In the Round 5 win, the mistake didn’t lead to the Tigers losing the game. Because it happened at half-time, it meant that even though a mistake was made the Tigers had plenty of time to make good.

The Dragons were not so lucky, with the mistake occurring at the final siren.

I don’t like to say that refereeing decisions rob teams of a win because, in an 80-minute game of footy, there are too many things such as dropped balls and poor last-tackle options to ultimately blame.

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Yet when the game has already concluded and one team has rightfully won, I don’t see how it can be labelled any other way than to say: the Dragons were robbed.

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