Two moments caught my eye in Thursday night’s match between the Dragons and the Panthers. Midway through the second half both sides should have been reduced to 12 men after blatant professional fouls.
The first came when Gareth Widdop made a break off a wonderful Jack De Belin offload. He was tackled 10 metres out and Sika Manu came in and effectively killed the play by lying all over him until the sweet sound of the referee’s whistle came to his ears.
He was not sin-binned and the Dragons took two points.
Not five minutes later the Panthers made a break and Tyrone Peachey ended up tackled a couple of metres short of the Dragons line. In an arguably more blatant professional foul Euan Aitken sat holding Peachey and awaiting the whistle so his side could reset their line.
Again no talk of the sin-bin, the referees didn’t even caution the players or warn the captains.
This year there have only seen 10 players sin-binned and one player sent off. Compare this with the Super League which has seen the yellow card used 44 times, with six players sent off.
A lot of NRL pundits and ex-players have suggested the five-minute sin-bin as a way of lessening the impact of the penalty. This is unnecessary. What the NRL needs to do is take a leaf out of Super League, and even rugby union, and bin all professional fouls.
Now you might say this brings another grey area into NRL adjudication, but does it?
If a player throws a punch, he sits down. If a player questions the referee’s integrity or otherwise shows dissent, he sits down. If there are repeated infringements, especially on the goal-line (e.g. Roosters), then a blanket caution is given and after the next penalty the offender sits down.
If a player illegally prevents a scoring opportunity by the opponent, whether they pull a player back, trip or interfere in the play-the-ball after a line-break, they must be punished accordingly.
When looking at using the sin-bin, we have to look at the positives it would bring.
Firstly, the offending teams’ defensive line will open up, and we will either see more tries or desperate defence as the side with 12 try to rally.
Secondly, it will punish negative play, if the sin-bin is practiced more then all of a sudden sides will cease to play negative football and this is for the greater good.
Thirdly, it will remove a lot of controversy and complaints from all sorts of personalities around the game. If players are consistently sin-binned for negative play then no one can complain.
In time NRL coaches will accept the use of the sin-bin for repeated infringements and professional fouls.
So forget about the five-minute sin-bin or other variants, we have a perfect but underused system in our game already. Ten minutes is a big deterrent to hold a player off the ball, trip and slow the play down, let’s make it that way.
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