The Cowboys beat the Sharks, not the refs

Referees are the parking inspectors of rugby league. If they weren’t around you wouldn’t get a park at the beach on a Saturday, your ten metres not be enforced and tries would not be sent upstairs to the video god-box in the sky.

It would be anarchy and nobody wants anarchy, even anarchists – if they’re honest with themselves. It would be silly, and bad.

So, something of a shout-out to the men in pink, the Pinkertons, even, at Allianz Stadium on Sunday afternoon, Ashley Klein and Gavin Badger, who, despite Paul Gallen and his team of mechanical up-and-down arm-bandits firing up the 16,000-strong pro-Shark Army continued to call it as they saw it.

That what they saw, in hindsight, was proved wrong, on occasion, doesn’t make their officiating less than fine reffing.

Now, that might sound counter-intuitive but there it is. For all refs can do, surely all we can ask of them, is to call each incident as they see it. Not to worry about the state of the game, or how their decisions will affect the game. But each individual incident, make a call on it best you can.

Easier said than done. And it’s a fact referees will call a strip at one end and a knock-on at the other end, depending who’s been getting the rougher end of the pineapple. That’s human, that’s what happens.

Tony Archer and the NRL HQ spin-meisters will tell you otherwise. But it’s true. And I know it’s true because an NRL ref told me it was true. Refs will blow 50-50 calls the ‘safe’ way. And by safe, I meant the way that they’ll be less criticised.

On Sunday the refs took the hard road and the Sharks didn’t like it.

Paul Gallen took a punt on something happening Sunday night that didn’t happen. His team tied 12-all at the death, Gallen stormed to the line. His halves were out back, waiting to have a shot at the match-winning point. Gallen stormed into the meat.

(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

And then he tried to play the ball fast. Had he wanted to ensure the play-the-ball wasn’t botched, he could have. But he tried a quick one. Worst case, quick play-the-ball. Best case, milk a penalty. But neither came off. And Gallen was incensed. And Flanagan in the box was incensed.

For had they not seen their team penalised when Matt Prior was adjudged to have ripped the ball from his opponents? Ethan Lowe had then banged over the two points, and a tied game it was. So the ball got down the other end. Gallen had a crack at the line. Tried a quick play-the-ball that went bad.

He took a punt that the referees would have it in their mind that Cronulla ‘deserved’ a penalty because the Cowboys got one the other end. Flanagan was expecting it thus. Alas for the hard-eyed Sharks stewards, referee Badger ruled knock-on. Dud play-the-ball. Sharks’ footy.

The refs, to their credit, didn’t play Gallen’s game. They were calling it as they saw it. May not have been ‘correct’ in Gallen’s mind given there’d been a penalty the other end for the same thing. But the stripping rule is a vexed beast and the refs make decisions on tackles and play-the-balls which could absolutely go either way.

Fifty-fifty. Toss a coin. Players know that. Gallen very definitely knows that.

But Sunday night at Allianz they called it as they saw it. All you can ask.

That said, what happened to the knock-back? Remember that? The Sharks were stiff when a couple of dropped balls clearly travelled backwards – Andrew Fifita’s through the legs on, Val Holmes’s kick return one. But that’s rugby league today – you drop the ball you’ve knocked it on.

The knock-back doesn’t exist, hardly. The refs call it as they see it, and what they see is the possibility, however remote, that they’ll be criticised for not calling knock-on.

The safe option is to call knock-on. For everything.

See the Andrew Fifita one, he bent down to catch a grubber that brushed his hands and went backwards through his legs like tunnel ball. Flanagan said later: “If anyone on this planet thinks Andrew Fifita knocked that ball on … it went through his legs.”

Then the refs leaked a match report to The Daily Telegraph, and one of the items said: “Fifita touches the ball with his both hands and attempts to pick it up and regather. The ball at this point is off the ground. The ball is then dropped back to the ground. This constitutes a knock on. Following that the ball is then knocked backward and comes off his left foot before Gallen regathers.”

Andrew Fifita (AAP Image/Action Photographics, Grant Trouville)

Have these people heard of physics? The laws of force and gravity? I mean, the knock-on rule says you have to propel the ball towards your opponent’s try-line. How could Fifita have done that? And then shot the ball out between his legs tunnel-ball style backwards in a split second?

Respect to the refs at the time ruling thus, because that’s what they do. But for Tony Archer to sign off on a report that said that was a knock-on is, well, bloody-mindedness is one thing. But he’s flat out wrong.

That’s not a knock-on. It’s not a knock-on. A knock-on? Not a knock-on.

Naturally, Sharks fans – like all fans – including the biggest Sharks fan of all, our Flanno, felt said calls were not fair. But if Flanno and Gal and the rest of their bashed-up defending premiers didn’t want to be penalised as much there was a quite simple way around it.

Stop being bad.

Every team sails close to the wind on penalties and expects to cop them. The Roosters were the most penalised team of 2013, won the comp.

But penalties weren’t why the Sharks lost. It was because they couldn’t score enough points. And they were playing against Cowboys who can’t be killed.

And they dropped the ball like it was a mucous membrane filled with poisonous soldier ants.

And so on.