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One of my least favourite sayings is ‘perception is reality’.
It’s attributed to Lee Atwater, a former Republican party strategist in the USA, who based his campaign work around making people believe things that may not have been entirely true, but were useful to his candidate.
These days, sports journos throw the phrase around all the time to justify their wilder opinions or confirm their own biases (it’s particularly popular in AFL circles).
I don’t like it, but the words keep coming around to me when I hear stories about the state of the NRL refereeing department.
Before we get too deep though, let’s take a step back.
The sequence of events at Shark Park last Friday night leading to Sione Katoa’s 58th-minute try were rare. It was a complete breakdown in the match officials’ communication, decision making and on-field leadership.
I can’t remember ever seeing anything like it and odds are that it will be a long time before we see the likes of it again.
Contrary to popular perception, the fact that it was so influential in the outcome of the game was also rare.
What was most concerning was that no one in the process took ownership, from when Rick MacFarlane put his flag up then whipped it straight down, to when Gerard Sutton put the whistle to his lips then took it out, to when Luke Patten hit the green button.
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There were at least three points where the correct decision could have been made if someone just took ownership. But from the moment the try was awarded, the NRL’s handling of this issue has been appalling.
Todd Greenberg came out Monday with chest puffed to declare: “You can take it as read that tomorrow’s appointments will reflect some of that disappointment. There has to be accountability, that’s across the board, including me. You can expect there will be accountability taken tomorrow.”
Fans are screaming out for strong, decisive leadership from the NRL and when the CEO comes out swinging, it’s expected the actions will match the rhetoric.
Recriminations landed on Tuesday: pocket referee Gavin Reynolds was cut for calling an incorrect forward pass which cost the Raiders a try. MacFarlane was cut for raising his flag when he shouldn’t have.
Funnily enough, nothing has been said of MacFarlane’s correct ruling on that forward pass.
Patten, who awarded the try against all reason, stays in the Bunker, demoted to a ‘lesser role’, whatever that means.
Sutton gets away pretty much clean, staying in first grade (more on that later). Remember, it was Sutton who put the whistle to his lips before abdicating responsibility to the Bunker.
You could read it all over his face when it became apparent there was going to be a try awarded – he knew he’d stuffed up.
But Greenberg waved through these appointments then sent out his head of football, Brian Canavan, to face the music. That’s not a good look. That’s not the leadership you’d expect from a CEO who less than 12 hours prior was talking tough.
Compounding all of this was the NRL’s own announcement that while Sutton was still doing first grade, he’d been ‘demoted’ to the Titans vs Warriors game – clumsy wording at best, a staggering display of disrespect at worst.
I’m not big on demotions and public dressing downs of referees. If I’m a referee, I could cop some real talk behind closed doors, but I’d want to know my boss will defend me in public from all the noise and tell my critics to do one when they’re screaming about how everything is my fault.
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I can cop that referees make mistakes – they get vastly more decisions right than wrong. To be completely honest, I’d prefer Macfarlane and Reynolds remain in first grade, to shake off one bad moment but stay on the horse.
Instead, Tony Archer and co. appear to be more than happy to publicly execute referees for errors, highlight demotions and generally give credence to all the whackjob theories out there about the whistleblowers.
I can’t remember the last public display of support from NRL headquarters on behalf of their match officials.
Why doesn’t anyone from head office come out strongly when referees are under attack? Who’s looking out for their wellbeing?
Greenberg has already hung the referees out to dry this year when he publicly rebuked them in announcing the NRL’s predictable backflip on their ‘annual rules crackdown’.
Ref bashing is the worst part of rugby league. It’s cheap, it’s a default to deflect from someone’s own shortcomings and, perhaps most sadly of all, it’s ingrained in the culture of the game – a stain that will never come out.
So it’s incredibly disheartening to see head office jump at the chance to sink the boot in as well.
In the wash up after the Friday night debacle, people jokingly predicted that Sutton would keep his job and everyone else would get the boot. The fact that this is essentially what’s happened does not help the NRL’s case against accusations of nepotism and reports of rock-bottom morale among the refereeing fraternity.
Many questions spring to mind: why didn’t Greenberg override this? Are we that light on for referees? Is it just that Tony Archer delivers an incredibly persuasive powerpoint presentation?
Are all the stories we read about doom and gloom in the ranks actually true?
Most importantly, how does the referee’s boss seem to have a magical hold over the CEO of a billion-dollar organisation?
It really does feed the perception that Tony Archer and Bernard Sutton are invincible and that, for all his tough talk, Todd Greenberg is a meek leader who’s getting walked all over.
Is that the reality?