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NRL referees boss Robert Finch has dismissed claims Gold Coast backrower Sam Tagataese should have been put on report for the hit which left Parramatta rookie Daniel Mortimer in doubt for Friday night’s preliminary final against the Bulldogs.
Mortimer suffered a hip-pointer injury in his side’s 27-2 win over the Titans at the Sydney Football Stadium on Friday night, the 20-year-old copping a hit from Tagataese shortly after kicking the ball.
Eels coach Daniel Anderson was scathing in his response to the lack of action taken by referees Jared Maxwell and Shayne Hayne, who failed to even penalise the Titans for what he labelled a “missile” attack.
But Finch – while admitting he had only had a brief look at the incident and would undertake a full review of the game with Maxwell and Hayne on Monday – claimed the sternest action would have been a penalty rather than Tagataese being put on report.
“The player’s on the front foot kicking the ball forward, he could have also then gone on and continued to run if he needed to,” Finch said.
“He wasn’t in the air, he wasn’t jumping to kick the ball.
“From my initial viewing, I would have thought the most would have been a penalty.”
The referees came under fire at the start of the year for offering kickers too much protection, with even the slightest contact penalised after what Finch then described as a reaction to coaches’ fears that star players were being targetted by late hits.
“It’s the better players that are kicking for them so their (the coaches) concerns were that they didn’t want the better players in the game being bashed out of the game, so we’ve actioned it,” Finch said at the start of the season.
There has, however, been a noticeable relaxing of the interpretation after complaints penalties were being called for innocuous contact, though Anderson believes the whistleblowers have gone too far the other way.
“I’ve had numerous discussions with the referees about kick pressure this year because I’ve thought in the Origin series that the kickers were getting collected,” Anderson said.
“(Tagataese) was a missile. He had his arms beside him, he didn’t go for a tackle and he took out a player.
“It doesn’t matter who it was, whether it was a young bloke or not, he took him out and to have nothing done is disappointing.”
The match review committee will meet on Monday to decide whether any further action will be taken against Tagataese.
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