The NRL's heat policy is a charade

Some of the NRL’s regulations are shambolic. Nothing illustrated this in the first round of the NRL’s 2016 season more than the disjointed and poorly communicated application of the drinks break.

Canberra and Penrith played out a game in near 40-degree Celsius heat, while later in the day at Campbelltown in temperatures closer to 20 than 40, the Tigers and the Warriors enjoyed a drinks stoppage immediately after a try.

Penrith half Jamie Soward had it mostly right when he tweeted: “Drinks break for different games? Canberra has no beach to get breeze form either.”

And then: “Drinks break after a try scored equals 3-4 minute break. Still couldn’t get one yesterday.”

Soward’s right – Canberra doesn’t have a beach and the leafy suburb of Bruce where GIO Stadium is located is too far away from Lake Burley Griffin to enjoy respite from any local water source.

Yet Campbelltown Stadium, at Leumeah in Sydney’s south-west, is also a long way from the nearest beach. If you are brave enough to battle Appin Road with its blind corners, curbside trees and annual fatalities, you can make beachside Wollongong in about 50 minutes.

Soward’s broader point is why the inconsistency? What he should have been questioning is ‘why the drinks break at all’?

There is no need for one. It’s a masquerade, a cloak of outsourced responsibility where NRL club medicos both have to agree a stoppage is necessary. The NRL can simply hide behind its game-day regulations and say, “It’s up to the clubs.”

What a cop-out. All ‘care’ and no responsibility.

How many drinks breaks does an NRL team need? Every time a try is scored water is run out. Every time a team loses possession the team gaining the ball has the benefit of a trainer carrying a bottle offering a sip and some instructions from the coaches. Any referrals to the video review bunker – more water opportunities.

Just watch Allan Langer in his trainer’s shirt next time you see a Broncos game.

To think that another break in play assists the players’ welfare or hydration is a furphy. It only serves to have teams regroup and reinforce their attacking and defensive structures for the next 20 minutes.

Despite these points, the most compelling evidence of this unevenness in application of the drinks break is in the lower grades. Granted they are not specifically under the auspices of the National Rugby League, but the Harold Matthews and SG Ball competitions (NSW Under-16 and Under-18 junior representative games) have been played in the summer months at mid-afternoon timeslots for as long as I can remember.

They all went ahead last weekend in more trying conditions than the NRL games and nobody gives it a second thought.

I have officiated in NRL games in Darwin – where the mercury was still pushing 40 at 7pm – Townsville and Cairns.

I was on the Gold Coast in Round 1, 2009 when, just like last weekend, the Knights took on the Titans. Except that year, the game kicked off at 1pm Queensland time on a Sunday afternoon.

Now that was hot – at the end of that game I had dropped 2.8 kilograms in lost fluid since kick off, and laid down on the change-room floor with a bag of ice under one arm and another between my legs. What a sight that must have been.

Even so, that wasn’t the hottest I’ve been at a footy game. In 2000, the year Sydney hosted the Olympic Games, all sport was shifted a month early to accommodate the September schedule.

At that time I was a lower grade official dreaming of getting into the graded ranks, when I found myself at Windsor on a Saturday afternoon in January as touch judge for both the Matthews and Ball trials between Penrith and Easts.

It was that hot that I was dizzy. The Windsor staff left a hose running at the side of the field the whole time so that the interchanged players and I could seek some solace in some running water on the face or neck.

By the end of it I was wobbly and faint. There’s not the same support for lower grade officials as there is at first-grade level.

I sat in the sheds with a bottle of water but was unable to drink it. The Windsor guys brought in some electrolytes for us and I could take some of that without feeling nauseous. It wasn’t much fun now that I reminisce about it. I hate to think how the players were coping!

After I showered and changed, I left the rooms to find that the Round 1 competition games of the Jersey Flegg and NSW First Division (as it was then known, today’s NSW Cup) had both been cancelled on advice of the doctors. It was too hot, so better to cancel it. And by that time the temperature was cooler than it was when we kicked off!

So what’s going on? NRL players are too precious, while the lower grade players and officials have to simply get on with it? I can’t even call it a double standard when so many standards are applied.

Get rid of the NRL’s drinks break. It’s insulting to every other tier of rugby league.