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In the last six months, we’ve seen three games in the NRL that have challenged the validity of golden point.
First, there was last year’s grand final. While I was personally happy to see the Cowboys take out the win, the golden point aspect took the edge off the victory a bit.
Make no mistake – at the time, golden point made it feel all the more exciting. Plus there was a poetic justice in seeing Thurston land a field goal after what had to be the unluckiest conversion attempt of 2015.
Nevertheless, in retrospect, I’ve started to question whether golden point was really the way to go.
More golden point:
» Golden point has lost its gleam
» Roar and Against: Is Golden point the best we have?
» NRL to consider scrapping golden point for finals
Seeing the amount of flack that Ben Hunt has copped has had a lot to with that. In all the opinion pieces I’ve seen, the question always seems to be: what does it mean to win in golden point?
However, I think that an even more important question is – what does it mean to lose in golden point?
Given the resources that the NRL devotes to player wellbeing and mental health, I think that the agony Hunt has experienced over the last six months has to indicate that something is wrong with the game as it now stands.
Of course, we don’t want to turn the NRL into a nanny state. Players can sometimes single-handedly cock up the last few minutes of a game. That’s life.
But the stakes still seem too high in golden point. It doesn’t feel right that a knock on has the ability to win or lose a grand final, which is presumably why the NRL has ruled that 2015 will be the last year in which that happens.
The second match over the last six months to draw out the failings of golden point has been the tie between the Knights and the Raiders at Hunter Stadium in Round 3.
If part of the rationale golden point is to avoid a tie, then why does it only last ten minutes?
Sure, there are scheduling concerns as well as the physical wellbeing of the players to consider. With the interchange reduced in 2016, the argument goes, it’s unreasonable to ask the forwards to play for more than ninety minutes.
You’ve got to consider the mental wellbeing aspect as well though. From what I could see at Hunter Stadium, neither team came away with any sense of release. In fact, they seemed more frustrated by golden point than anything else.
And why wouldn’t they be frustrated? When you’ve gone through ten straight minutes of golden point without a point scored on either side, you’ve got to ask yourself – what is the point?
The third match that’s shown up golden point this year has been the clash between the Tigers and the Storm at Leichhardt Oval last Sunday afternoon.
As a Tigers fan, I’m probably a bit biased here, but it felt as if golden point didn’t really add any tension. While some commentators described the final four minutes as the most galvanising in the game, I found that golden point simply intensified everything that was drab, dour and depressing about the game to begin with.
Far from adding a bit of extra spark to the match, golden point just seemed to make it even more anticlimactic.
Certainly, if we want to avoid ties, we need a solution.
But in many ways the solution is staring us straight in the face. Despite all the issues raised above, there has been one golden point match in the last six months that has been really stirring and inspiring to watch.
I’m talking, of course, about the match between the Roosters and the Warriors at Central Coast Stadium in Round 5.
This was one time when it felt as if the golden point winners really deserved to win, for the simple reason that New Zealand resolved it with a try, rather than a field goal, thanks to Roger Tuivasa-Sheck’s consummate dodging abilities with the ball.
What that match made so clear is that a golden point earned with a try genuinely does feel like a golden point well earned.
For the future, then, the NRL should aim for one of two options.
Most simply, change the rules of golden point so that only tries are allowed, rather than field goals.
Alternatively, scrap the idea of golden point altogether and just go into overtime until one team scores a try. That’s what effectively happened anyway at Central Coast Stadium and it made for some of the best footy of the season.
I’m in two minds about whether penalty goals should be allowed. While it’s a more than legitimate way to score a couple of points, I also feel that by the time we get to golden point the teams really need to be proving their claim to the win in the old-fashioned way.
At the very least, make it a rule that once games go into overtime, there has to be a two or even four-point margin for the wing.
Of course, one of the big issues with indefinite overtime is the physical strain it puts on the big men.
Given how rare golden point is, however, I think that’s a sacrifice worth making, especially since working towards a try has the ability to energise a team more than working towards a field goal.
When a golden point win is so dependent on a field goal – and on errors from the opposing team – it creates an overriding sense that the result is finally a matter of chance. That, in turn, produces a different kind of demotivation and anxiety.
You only have to look at the golden points at Hunter and Leichhardt to see proof of that. Cooper Cronk, Trent Hodkinson and Mitchell Moses are three of the strongest kickers in the game, as well as three of the strongest under pressure.
Under the unreasonable pressure to win a game solely on the back of their boot, however, they all came undone. Sure, Cronk might have made good with his second field goal attempt but it was still weird to see the Storm’s resident iceman fail at first kick.
I’m probably feeling a bit sentimental about RTS now that he’s been ruled out for the season, but in many ways his try against the Chooks still feels like one of the most powerful and decisive wins this season.
Wouldn’t it be great if golden point always felt like that? However they choose to handle it, let’s hope that the NRL keeps that terrific match in mind when considering the future.
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