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Why wasn't Soliola sent off? The answer may surprise you

27th July, 2017
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Sia Soliola returns for the Raiders this week – just in time to face the Storm! (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)
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27th July, 2017
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So, here we are: six days after Iosia ‘Rodney’ Soliola knocked out Billy Slater and people are still asking: why wasn’t Soliloa sent off?

Soliola’s since copped five weeks off and people are broadly nodding along, thinking, yes, that seems about right.

But they still don’t know why he wasn’t sent off on that fateful Saturday evening at the stadium once called Bruce.

I know, though.

And we’ll talk of it in good time.

For now – was it a send-off? Of course it was! It was late, it was high, and it knocked the bloke out. Tick, tick, tick. How many other criteria for what constitutes foul play are there?

Did Soliola have to leap on Slater afterwards? Make like one of those UFC guys and launch a flying elbow him at his prone head? Did he have to bite him? Try to eat him?

Ricky Stuart knew it was bad. He ripped off a classic post-match Wayne Bennett-patented Diversionary Tactic, telling the world the refs weren’t very good in several areas.

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“Coaches have to come in here and own up to every question you [media] blokes want to throw at us and we do it week in and week out,” he said.

sia-soliola-billy-slater-tackle-tall

(AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

“We just keep on aiming up, coming in here having to answer your questions after our week, season of hard work and yet … why don’t the NRL get the referees in here to come in and answer some of these questions too? Or Tony Archer? When do they ever have to face any accountability? The best thing the NRL have done is just keep fining me and fining me and fining me and whacking the hell out of me so I don’t say anything.

“Why doesn’t the NRL come out and make public some of the communications between the referees and the bunker and the actual linesmen? Then we’ll start fixing some things in regards to what’s going on in interpretations, inconsistencies. Let’s make everybody accountable. I’m accountable – I’ve got to sit here every friggin’ week and answer questions. Let’s make everybody in the game accountable.”

And then he added this:

“Those poor bastards in there, my players, they’re accountable every week. They’ve got to go home now and face scrutiny through social media and all our fans. They’ve busted themselves tonight. That was one of the best games they’ve played all year tonight. Not everybody in the game’s accountable.”

So yes, a fine rant from our man Rick, and you’d expect nothing else from a passion player like him.

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But watch him, and know the man a little, and it looks like his heart wasn’t absolutely in it.

It wasn’t a Classic Ricky Rant. It was a coach protecting his player from the noise of a witch-hunt.

Maybe not a witch-hunt. But as Stuart said, there was going to be a whole lot of media – traditional, social, anti-social – banging on about Soliola’s swinging arm.

And so Stuart did a Donald Trump and got people to talk about him banning transgender people from the military rather than him trying to fire another man investigating him for colluding with Russia, a foreign adversary.

Well, sort of.

But Stuart knew The Big Story of the Night wasn’t going to be Storm knocking over the Raiders and nailing a probable final spike in the Raiders’ 2017 Telstra Premiership coffin.

No. It was going to be the Raiders big-haired Samoan lock taking out – indeed knocking out – rugby league’s best fullback.

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And so it came to pass: it wasn’t fair that the Storm’s champion played no further part in the game yet Soliola did.

It wasn’t fair that Storm were down to 15 players given Cam Smith was already gone.

And so on.

So Stuart held up a puppet – himself, ‘ranting’ – and waved it at all those different sorts of media and said, Hello! Look over here! Look at me!

Ricky Stuart fronts the media

And here we are. Still wondering why Soliola wasn’t sent off.

Well, I’m not. Because I know why he wasn’t sent off. And I know whose fault it is.

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And I’m going to tell you.

It’s yours.

Soliola not being sent off is your fault.

That’s right. You there, the rugby league fan. The consumer of this greatest game of all rugby league.

Because it’s you, and those like you, and Stuart and coaches and pundits and broadcasters, and anyone who bangs on about the quality of rugby league refereeing.

It’s all your fault.

Because there’s one thing you’ve always demanded of referees, and it’s this: consistency.

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Tune into talkback, tool about on Twitter, delve deep into the dungeons of the darkest interweb and someone will be saying all they ask of referee is one thing: consistency.

Well, now you have it. How do you like it?

Because Soliola wasn’t sent off because no-one gets sent off. That’s consistent. Which is what you want.

Soliloa not being sent off is entirely consistent with the last several years of rugby league refereeing. No-one gets sent off.

The last player sent off in the NRL was David Shillington in Round 22 of 2015 for a head-butt in a scrum in front of the ref. He was the first one for two years before that.

At April of 2015 Fox Sports’ website had a headline: “No player has been sent off in the NRL for 22,000 minutes.”

The reason? Consistency! You send someone off in the NRL, first thing you’ll hear post-match – particularly if it’s early on and affects the result – is a coach comparing it to some other incident in which a player wasn’t sent off.

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They’ll say: it’s inconsistent. And that inconsistency is bad.

And everyone will jump aboard and the refs will be accused of the heinous crime of inconsistency.

And they will feel bad, for they are but human. Truly, they are.

And thus refs will decide, because they are human, that it’s safer not to send someone else.

And that if they don’t it will be consistent.

And that’s good, isn’t it?

And here we are.

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And it’s your fault.

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