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The aftermath to Trent Robinson's massive referee spray

27th April, 2016
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(The Roar)
Expert
27th April, 2016
108
2597 Reads

Yesterday, Roosters coach Trent Robinson was fined $20,000 for confronting referee Ben Cummins in the Allianz Stadium tunnel, and another $20,000 for a media conference refereeing spray after the Dragons’ 20-18 win on Anzac Day.

Nick Politis, the Roosters powerbroker, Robinson, Cummins, and NRL boss Todd Greenberg, are set to have a ‘peace’ meeting to resolve their grievances.

The NRL has crystal-clear requirements: any beefs with referees must be behind closed doors and never aired in public.

According to those regulations, Robinson was out of order on both the tunnel and media conference levels.

But the behind-closed-doors edict has major drawbacks. If nothing is done or resolved about any grievance, nobody would ever know it was even brought to the attention of the NRL, well away from media watch and fans.

What Robinson has done is make it just as crystal clear that Cummins was at fault, so too many bunker decisions, and hopefully he will bring inconsistent judiciary decisions into play as well.

After the meeting, the NRL must answer those grievances across the board, nothing can be swept under the carpet.

Let’s breakdown the three components.

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Referees
Players are taught from an early age to respect referee’s decisions – but the terminology is wrong.

Respect must be earned, not demanded, so the more appropriate word would be accept the referee’s decision.

There will never be peace until the referees accept their place as 27th on the park, not number one.

To illustrate, it’s possible for players to referee their own game. It would probably be a shambles, but possible nonetheless. But it would be impossible for referees to control a game with no players.

This season it’s very rare for a referee to immediately award a try. They are constantly giving the box signal, showing their belief with a try or no try signal, and letting the bunker sort it out to cover their butts.

The time wasting is enormously high, but in defence of the referee’s inability to make an immediate decision one way or the other, howlers are definitely limited by the bunker’s involvement.

Two quotes ensure the peace” meeting won’t be peaceful.

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Robinson said, “I’m not going to sit here and allow poor decisions to go by, and I’m not going to allow referees to talk to my players as they have over the years.”

Greenberg said, “We cannot stand by and allow any club to deliberately and blatantly attack our referees”.

The Bunker
The new $2 million, state-of-the-art NRL bunker was hailed as a boon to the code, cutting down decision times.

It worked a treat for a couple of weeks, but as each round goes by, the decisions are getting slower and slower, with inconsistencies.

Former top referee Tony Archer is the bunker boss, with two senior controllers in former ref Bernard Sutton and former player Luke Patten.

On the touchy subject of obstruction, Sutton sees it one way, Patten sees it exactly the opposite.

At this peace meeting, Robinson will no doubt bring up the bunker interfering with refereeing decisions in general play, which isn’t the bunker’s brief.

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Judiciary
Touching a referee has become a shambles, with some players not even charged, one exonerated, and another copping a week.

It’s those inconsistencies that plague the judiciary, and there have been many more in other areas over the years.

Now it’s up to Nick Politis, Trent Robinson, Ben Cummins, and Todd Greenberg to sort out their problems across the table.

Then it will be Greenberg’s responsibility to front the media and fans to summarise what went on behind closed doors.

If the shortcomings on all sides can be improved, there should be 15 clubs ringing Trent Robinson thanking him for his $40,000 investment.

It was cheap at the price.

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