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Referees are killing rugby league, and it's your fault

Roar Rookie
26th April, 2017
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NRL referees are under the blowtorch as usual. (AAP Image/Action Photographics, Robb Cox)
Roar Rookie
26th April, 2017
56
3251 Reads

Play the whistle. It’s a mantra that’s drilled into our boys and girls at sporting fields across the country, from sun up to sun down, every weekend. A mantra that contains more sporting wisdom than it’s given credit for.

While the idea of playing the whistle is still followed (for the most part) by NRL players, NRL coaches and commentators alike are guilty of trying to replay the whistle – to dissect and criticise, long after the pads have come off the goal posts.

The NRL community is living in a bubble of its own design, in which everyone believes they are entitled to perfection from the game’s officials. At what point in our history did we stop viewing our referees as an integral part of the fabric of our game, and start viewing them as robots with whistles? How is it that we’ve come to expect absolute perfection from our officials, but would probably be satisfied if our team produced a completion rate of just 85 per cent?

No other professional sport in the country subjects their match officials to the level of scrutiny that the NRL referees face. No other sport would allow their officials to be derided in the same manner as ours.

Imagine if your job performance was filmed, broadcast on national TV, and every perceived error critiqued by anyone with a keyboard, and then you’re expected come back for more next week. That’s the reality facing our referees, who are required to make split-second decisions under tremendous pressure.

Referee Gerard Sutton sin bins Bulldogs David Klemmer

There’s been much talk in recent times of referee bias – the notion that referees have pre-conceived ideas about who the stronger team is, and adjudicate in favour of that team. Let’s be fair dinkum for a minute, no referee sets out to make poor decisions, or to deliberately favour one team over another. Yet there’s enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that perhaps such bias exists. How can this be?

Many years ago I met Bill Harrigan, who was the leading referee at the time. He was asked why he didn’t rely on the video referee as much as his counterparts. His response was: “If it looks like a pig, it’s probably a pig”. The inference, that if it looks like a knock on, it probably was a knock on (and so on).

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But in an age where we expect every decision to be 100 per cent correct on each and every occasion, the referees no longer trust their own eyes. We’ve backed the referees into a corner, to the point where they no longer feel empowered to call it as they see it.

The referee now has so many things to think about, and so much pressure facing them, that they’re looking for things that just aren’t there. These are what I refer to as a ‘ghost call’ – a decision based on something they thought they might have seen. And make no mistake, our referees are spooked.

Next time you’re at an NRL game, watch the referee. If you watch him for long enough you can note the exact moment he second guesses himself. The ball hits the deck, the referee puts the whistle up to his mouth, and then puts it straight back down again. He thought he saw a pig, but talked himself out of it.

When a referee doesn’t have the confidence to back himself, and talks himself out of what he saw, he’s open to bias. Not intentionally, but subconsciously, he makes the decision that he believes will have the least impact on the outcome of the match. He knows something’s happened, and he needs to make a decision, but he just doesn’t trust himself. Self-preservation determines that if the decision goes the way of the favourite, then he is less likely to be blamed for the outcome.

Of course, this is only a theory, but if referee bias is real, then it’s a mess of our own making.

Rewind 20 years. No bunker. One referee. That referee made mistakes, no doubt about it. But we didn’t obsess over it. We just got on with it. ‘Swings and roundabouts,’ we would say. The game was simple. Decisions were made, and the game moved on.

Let’s give the referees some breathing room, allow them to back themselves and not crucify them when they get it wrong. Let’s take a step back and appreciate the overwhelming majority of decisions that our referees actually do get right.

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And for heaven’s sake, just play the damn whistle.

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