The Roar
The Roar

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Play-the-ball penalties are often wrong, but at least they're consistent

CronkBot never sleeps. (Photo by Ashley Feder/Getty Images)
Expert
24th May, 2018
26

Rugby league has rules, and it has rules.

There are rules that can’t be broken. There are rules that can be bent. There are rules that could go either way, depending upon the whim of the referee on the day.

And then there are rules that were made up on the fly, and once applied one way, that’s it, forever on thereafter – that’s the rule.

Example? This latest pandemic of dummy-halves passing the ball on purpose into a man prone on the ground.

It’s a rule that someone ruled once and that’s how it’s had to be ruled forever after.

The rule actually says if the prone player can’t get out of the way in time and the dummy-half passes it into him, it’s a scrum.

I don’t know why it’s not play-on. But rugby league hates mess at the play-the-ball, and there you go.

So no when you pass it into the bloke on the deck you win a penalty. Every time.

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And you know why?

Because everyone wants … consistency.

How we’ve bayed for it.

The great God of Consistency, the holy grail of all things pure in this vexed greatest game of all rugby league, the thing that everyone – players and coaches and fans and media and the whole blessed job lot of us – has demanded of adjudications by the professional pea-men.

Consistency. That they all be the same.

Well, now we have it.

And you know what? It actually sucks.

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That’s right – consistency sucks.

Consistency means that if a rule is ruled once thus it must be ruled that way all the time.

Consistency means ruling knock-on when the ball’s gone backwards.

It’s in the rules. The knock-back is a rule. Cooper Cronk was tackled last week, the ball shot out backwards 180 degrees behind him. He was hit in a tackle, the ball shot out behind him.
Knock-on.

Cooper Cronk

Cooper Cronk (Photo by Ashley Feder/Getty Images)

It was not a knock-on. It was a knock-back. That is the rule. The ball has to travel towards the opponent’s try-line for it to be a knock-on.

That’s what it says in the rules.

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And yet because people want consistency, every time the ball touches the ground, it’s ruled knock-on. Knock forward. Even if it’s gone back.

Because of consistency.

What happened to the knock-back? The poor, dear sweet knock-back, which is a rule as listed in the rule book, but isn’t actually ruled upon, the game’s adjudicators having decided it’s too hard and ‘messy’ to rule upon. It’s easier to just call everything forward, even when Cooper Cronk is hit hard in a tackle and the ball squirts out backwards to his own goal posts, oh yes, knock-on, it drives me spare.

Consistency!

Consistency means allowing the ball to go under the lock’s feet in the scrum, and for neither side to push.

Consistency means same-same-never-different.

It means that even though the rule book says X, because someone has ruled upon it in Y fashion, then must be ruled thus forever after amen.

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Because otherwise it would be inconsistent. And that would be very bad. Apparently.

Rugby league has reached a point that consistent application of a rule is more important than correct application of the rule.

Fact-ity fact fact fact.

Fact.

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Consider this latest new black of penalty-milking, the old (new) pass-the-ball-into-the-tackler-who’s-lying-on-the-ground-unable-to-move-because-he’s-just made-a-tackle trick.

Consistency has delivered us this.

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You know what I’m talking about. Will Smith pulled one in last week’s early Friday game, and Anthony Milford did one in the latter.

Smith basically dropped the ball on the body of Issac Luke as he lay on the ground.

Milford’s one, there was no-one to pass to on the other side of the bloke he passed the ball into. He wasn’t passing it to one of his own players. He was milking a penalty.

And our referees – because everyone’s been yelling at them to be consistent – are massive milk-filled teets.

Rugby league knocks ‘gamesmanship’ in the form of diving in association football, yet can for some reason largely cop this sort of gamesmanship because … well, because rugby league doesn’t know how to feel about it.

I mean, hell! It’s consistent, isn’t it? It’s a rule that’s consistently applied…

And if one ref’s blown a penalty for it, then all refs must blow a penalty for it. Because consistency.

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And you know what? The hell with consistency.

How about this instead – rule to the bloody rules of the game.

For each incident, adjudicate on its merits.

And if one game Will Smith wins a penalty, and the next one Anthony Milford does not, all good!

Because if a player wants to take a punt on milking a penalty, it should be just that – a punt, not a guaranteed win. Not a guaranteed two points or 80 metres downtown.

Paul Gallen found that out in the semi-final versus North Queensland last year. He thought his messy play-the-ball would win him a penalty because there’d been a penalty down the other end.

Gallen thought it would be squared up.

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Paul Gallen Cronulla Sharks NRL Rugby League Finals 2017

(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Gallen was wrong.

The ref then adjudicated on the incident. Which, one would suggest, is how it should be.

Again – why not just adjudicate each incident as it happens, not on what someone did last play, half, week, season?

Why not just rule it according to the rules?

Former ref and ref’s boss Greg McCallum is a friend of mine on Facebook, which mean I’ve never met the bloke and that we are indeed not friends. But he wrote something on his status thingy the other day about the Smith and Milford teet-sucking, and it was this.

“Notes on the Laws of the Game.

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“Penalise intentional interference 10.(g). If the ball is played quickly, all players will not necessarily have time to retire the prescribed distance.

“They should be penalised only if they intentionally interfere with play – either actively or passively.

“If the interference with play is accidental, a scrum should be formed. “Interference should not be considered accidental when the player concerned has had opportunity to remove himself from the area in which play is taking place.

“I don’t think either player intentionally – passively or otherwise – breached the rules.

“It is not a good thing to see – almost as bad as diving in football etc.”

Which is true.

It is consistent, though.

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So there is that.

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