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My message to refs in the finals? Call it as you see it!

15th September, 2015
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The video refs may occasionally get it wrong, but it's not because of bias. (Image David Jackmanson, Wikimedia Commons)
Expert
15th September, 2015
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1271 Reads

The decision I was most happy to see made in the first weekend of the finals just happened to be wrong.

I’m not happy that the officials made an incorrect call – nobody who ever held a whistle or a flag is happy to get something wrong. But across the weekend of matches I was happy that someone made a decision on what they saw and we got on with the game of football.

Late in the second half of Saturday’s game between the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs and the St George-Illawarra Dragons, the Red V attempted a short kickoff to try and secure possession in a desperate attempt to win the game.

Trailing ten points to eight in the dying moments of the match they needed a miracle to avoid defeat.

Enter Shaun Lane. The Bulldogs forward caught the ball after it had rebounded from his teammate Sam Perrett behind him and Jarad Maxwell promptly awarded the Dragons the penalty.

Lane was in an offside position as he was in front of the last player to touch it who was also on the same team.

Bravo! We’ve finally seen the officials award a penalty at a crunch time of the game without hiding behind a KFC scoreboard graphic.

Dead-eye goal kicker Englishman Gareth Widdop stepped up to slot the penalty goal after the siren and the game headed to golden point.

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However, on closer inspection of the replay it was revealed that veteran Dragons winger Jason Nightingale had, in contesting the kick, played at the ball after it had touched Perrettt, thereby negating the offside offence.

Lane was no longer in an offside position, as the ball had actually been last touched by an opponent.

The correct decision would have been to rule a knock on against Perrett, a scrum feed to the Dragons and likely a Bulldogs win in regular time. Instead, the Dragons got their miracle but could not take advantage of it, eventually going down 11 to 10.

Sure, we had an error from the officials. Sure, it could have ‘cost’ the Bulldogs the game and ended their season. But I was encouraged that we had a decision to make and the officials made it.

There’s a split second to judge who that ball hit and between the referee and his touch judge they missed it.

You know what? That’s sport. There were plenty of mistakes from both sides in that match, not least the failed 40/20 attempt from Widdop that gave the Bulldogs field position to ultimately kick the winning field goal.

The game likely hinged on that moment. A successful kick would give the Dragons field position to win and an unsuccessful one gifted victory to the Bulldogs.

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That section of the game was played and officiated in the moment. It was the best suspense the game can provide. It was theatre.

Compare what I’ve just described to the events of the following day where the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks took on the South Sydney Rabbitohs.

The Sharks came out in finals mode and took the game by the scruff of the neck right from the start. They were tough, dominant in defence and disciplined with the ball.

The Rabbitohs were a rabble. They had a barely-fit Greg Inglis at the back being as ill-disciplined as I’ve ever seen him – and the rest of the team followed suit.

Even Luke Keary behaved like a grub to the man who once wore the crown as King of the Grubs – Paul Gallen.

Even so, the Rabbitohs had their chances. They only conceded the first try after more than 20 minutes and despite leaking two more were still alive at the break provided they started the second half with the first points.

They looked to have those points on the board when Luke Keary fielded a grubber kick in his own in-goal and streaked away to score under the posts.

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The officials allowed play to progress and I thought we had a contest at 18 points to 6. Game on!

Instead, referee Matt Cecchin ruled no try and asked for the decision to be reviewed. The assistant referee Ashley Klein had spotted an obstruction on Cronulla fullback Michael Gordon and called to his colleague to penalise Souths.

Yet instead of awarding the penalty, Cecchin allowed Keary to run 100 metres before pulling it up.

Cecchin was playing Russian Roulette with his use of the video referee. If Keary pulls a hamstring way downfield, or if Valentine Holmes closes on him and tackles him short, the referee has no fallback available.

The video referee can only review action from after the previous play the ball.

So Cecchin would either have to allow play to continue from the next play the ball, likely leading to a Souths try, or he would have to justify going back 90 or so metres to award the penalty that he should have blown in the first place.

It is not the first time that this has happened and it won’t be the last. I can understand declaring a try as a live decision and then reviewing an aspect of play leading to it, but not deliberately brushing a colleague and then banking on a try so it can be reviewed.

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In these two cases we have one decision made in real-time (which was later proved incorrect) but we got on with the game, and we had another where a video review was manufactured when it should not have been referred.

I have previously written that I would rather the video only be used if a team’s captain challenges a decision. In both cases we would have had the right result and the heat would be turned from the officials on to the captains.

As it turns out I was much more pleased to see Maxwell award the penalty because he was doing his job. He may have even relied on his touch judge and backed his judgment.

His reward for that confidence? His season is over. He was left off the on-field appointments this week.

So what was Matt Cecchin’s punishment for ignoring his assistant and gambling on a try to concoct a video review?

He’ll be the controlling referee on Friday night, ranking him in the top two referees this week, with Ben Cummins as his assistant.

Forget calling it as you see it – just make sure the correct ‘process’ is followed.

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Good luck to everyone this weekend!

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