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Mal Meninga provided one of the great moments in Ashes rugby league history with his late match-winning try in the second Test at Old Trafford in 1990.
Meninga had trailed Ricky Stuart on the halfback’s epic 70-metre run of redemption before taking a pass close to the British line.
It mightn’t be remembered that just before taking the pass, Big Mal had pushed a British defender in the back and out of the way, leaving him sprawled out on the hallowed turf.
Those were the days before bunker interventions. Had the bunker existed, the try would have been disallowed and Meninga would have been sin-binned.
The Meninga incident is recalled because of the mess the NRL has created with its judiciary system, and the Ashes comparison with the now-infamous Jake Trbojevic sin-binning in the elimination semi-final against South Sydney.
Was Trbojevic’s sin-binning correct under the rules? No doubt.
Did it cost Manly the game? Almost certainly.
Did the better team lose? Only a rabid Rabbitohs supporter would say no.
Long-time league watchers might say the Trbojevic half-push, half-grab while attempting to get at the ball-carrier should have just rated a penalty. It was scarcely a love tap compared with Meninga’s memorable moment, when all was fair in love and the Ashes.
It would have rated a penalty before gradings, mandatory decisions and points accrued.
Now a Marty Taupau old-fashioned stiff arm rates a week’s suspension.
In the time of the hanging judge, judiciary chairman Jim Comans, Taupau would have been booking a long holiday.
Remove the gradings, and any long-time league watcher would know Taupau wouldn’t have been playing any finals football.
Yet the fact that Sam Burgess’s hair pull that earned him a week’s suspension was deemed worth the same punishment as Taupau’s week for a stiff arm – unintended or not – is risible.
(Photo by Will Russell/Getty Images)
Long-term fans might remember an early State of Origin match in which Queensland’s Chris Close yanked Eric Grothe away by the hair after the NSW winger was involved in a tackle close to the Blues’ line.
Barry Gomersall was officiating, of course.
You call Burgess’ mild caress a hair pull? That was a hair pull.
So today we have Trbojevic, Taupau, Burgess, Cameron Smith and others with trivialities rated equivalent to atrocities that once would have rated send-offs, and referees and judiciaries straitjacketed and enforcing mandated penalties, or not.
What to do? It’s been said many times: there is no perfect system, but there is a better, simpler way.
Get rid of gradings and points and mandatory rulings.
The judiciary has an eminent legal man in Geoff Bellew as chairman. He is supported by qualified ex-players on the panel. There is a review committee scrutinising incidents the referees, touch judges and bunker may have missed.
Then let the judiciary determine guilt or innocence and penalties, unencumbered by gradings and points accrued.
That way Taupau would surely have earned more than a week. And they might have said of a Burgess-style hair pull, ”Why are you wasting our time? Penalty was sufficient.”
Suggestions that players are fined, so they don’t miss finals are risible too, and a licence to commit mayhem.
Or you could move into $100,000+ territory.
That’s a grading everyone understands.
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