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I’m not a proponent of corporal punishment but I do believe it’s time for the public paddling to be a feature of match days across the nation.
Let’s start with Geoff Toovey. The Manly coach’s complaints about the refereeing after one of the season’s best contests on Monday night pushed me over the edge.
What is the NRL going to do about the elite whiners in our game? Toovey spoke of the 10-5 penalty count in favour of the Storm like he’d been illegally cavity searched by airport security for trying to sneak a Hersheys bar in through customs.
What would have been acceptable? 10-6? 10-7? What he should have been focusing on was the fact that his side had just procured one competition point where there could easily have been none. An outstanding game was instead mired in immature drivel.
Geoff Toovey fails to realise that a little more maturity and equanimity in these sort of circumstances might actually make him a better coach during other moments of high stress and what he may perceive as bad luck.
Not to mention that this kind of bleating tends to trickle down to the players.
Which brings me very nicely to Jamie Lyon and Kieran Foran. You simply couldn’t play backyard cricket with these guys. They’d never walk in LBW or caught-behind situations.
Every single time a decision goes against their team, you know that a chat with the ref will ensue, usually including a veiled allegation of bias against their side.
Michael Ennis has been secretly guiding Jarryd Hayne through the process of becoming a black-belt childish whinger. The referees are far too polite when dealing with Ennis.
How many “be careful how you talk to me” statements must we stomach from the referees? Ennis knows that until he regularly gets 10 in the bin (which should be far more often for all of these children) he doesn’t have to be careful at all.
Hayne is developing his skills, going with the “two wrongs make me right” approach. He likes to bring up a play that occurred three weeks ago with a different referee to bolster his point.
The most infuriating thing is that while Jarryd appears to be asking why his team wasn’t given a penalty twenty minutes ago down the other end of the field, he is really just buying time.
That is the worst part of all this. We want attacking football but league’s great whiners are allowing their teams to get set in defence and stymie the opposition.
A new rule should be implemented: ignore the captains and tell the other team to play on.
And ignore Geoff Toovey. Just because he’s the same height as a 10-year old doesn’t mean he has to act like one.
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