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NRL's proposed central command centre gets a big tick

27th August, 2014
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Todd Greenberg in happier times, not wrestling a bear. (AAP Image/Dean Lewins)
Expert
27th August, 2014
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Two announcements in the past few days prompt me to declare this Good News Week for rugby league.

The first announcement should go down extremely well with frustrated league fans around the nation.

NRL Head of Football Todd Greenberg says the ruling body will trial a ‘central command’ centre next season.

Based on the successful NFL and NHL systems in the USA, the league is attempting to streamline and hopefully improve the consistency and accuracy of referee decisions by channelling all replays to a master video centre.

This would vastly reduce the number of video referees around the grounds, with the idea that this core group would be the cream of the crop and therefore expected to make more correct and consistent decisions.

“Given the technology that’s available we have to look at ways to get better,” Greenberg told AAP.

“We will undertake a feasibility study into a central command centre where in-game decisions can be made by a smaller number of experts.

“We think this will have a real impact on the consistency because the same group of people can make calls on various games across the round.

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“The command centre could be a real game-changer for rugby league, our biggest (innovation) since technology was introduced.”

Greenberg added that establishing the new video adjudication system would cost “millions of dollars” but there would not be a solitary fan who complained if the weekly complaints and controversy subsided.

There can never be a perfect system where personal opinions are involved but the NRL must be applauded for at least trialling a new process.

A host of questions are sure to arise: who will comprise this four or five-man video panel? How will these ‘experts’ be chosen? Will they come from the refereeing ranks, will they be former players or could there even be someone not connected with the game, perhaps a ‘man in the street’ representative?

Greenberg said there was also an opportunity for specific injury surveillance and that coaches, post-game, might be given charge-sheets outlining potential penalties for their players’ on-field misdemeanours.

The second good news item was that one of Australia’s finest rugby league scribes, Ian Heads, has been inducted into the SCG’s inaugural Media Hall of Fame.

This man is quite possibly the best league writer we have seen in this country, having 12 consecutive seasons with the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph and later serving as supremo at Rugby League Week, as well as being a casual contributor for several other league outlets.

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After leaving newspapers and magazines, the highly professional and extremely likeable Heads became a prolific author of more than 40 sports books, many of which centred on his pet subject, rugby league.

I was delighted to see Ian’s name on the list of inaugural inductees. If you have read his work, you have been informed and/or entertained by the man I have long regarded regard as the rugby league doyen.

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