ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys has slammed the referees union after the governing body made a complaint with the Fair Work Commission over the NRL’s new one-referee system.
The situation threatens to turn ugly just two weeks out from the start of the revised season.
Professional Rugby League Match Officials on Thursday claimed the league had no right to change the officiating model under the current enterprise agreement.
They have engaged the services of Harmers Workplace Lawyers with the goal of finding a resolution before the competition resumes on May 28, but won’t rule out strike action.
V’landys has launched a passionate defence of the decision, saying PRLMO chair Silvio Del Vecchio is not helping referees.
“It’s totally ludicrous and I don’t think his confrontational and misleading approach is helping his association,” V’landys said.
“We’ve done nothing wrong. All the 21 referees that are full-time will be kept.”
Del Vecchio told AAP they are confident of getting the NRL to overturn Wednesday’s decision and go back to using two on-field referees.
The PRLMO says that under the terms of the four-year agreement, which began in 2019, the governing body must persist with the two-referee system.
In a letter sent to the ARL Commission the union presented a number of reasons why any rule change required more consultation.
They included duty of care to players and match officials, best interests of fans and sponsors, and potential errors in calculation of financial savings.
Cost saving has been a reason given by V’landys to move back to one referee, while he also says it has the backing of fans.
The NRL points to a survey conducted in 2019, where fans were asked what rule innovation would they like to see to make the game more unpredictable and entertaining.
Around 18,000 people responded, and V’landys says the second highest response behind changes to scrums was reverting to one referee.
AAP has requested a copy of the survey results.
Del Vecchio calculated that even if the NRL terminated all eight of its casual whistleblowers, the savings amounts to less than $300,000 a year.
“We’ve done the maths. When you average it out over the course of the remaining games of the year, it equates to $20 per minute of each game,” he said.
“It’s just peanuts. It’s unnecessary.
“More importantly, they haven’t consulted with us. We can recommend different ways to save a lot of money in the NRL in the refereeing department.”
The NRL claim referees were briefed on the changes last week, and that union representatives were present at a consultation meeting on Monday.
A submission from the PRLMO is also understood to have been presented to the ARL Commission prior to its final decision.
The referees union says the league has often previously preached about the “superiority” of the two-referee model, as recently as last year’s grand final.
Del Vecchio went on to claim that more than 80 per cent of play-the-ball infringements and illegal tackles are called by the pocket (second) referee.
Asked whether the referees would take strike action if a resolution can’t be reached before May 28, Del Vecchio said: “We’ll assess it at that time.”
Noosa Duck
Roar Rookie
Albo it has to happen, he did refer to the fan survey as a catalyst for this so why prolong it.
Noosa Duck
Roar Rookie
:crying: :thumbdown: you are entitled to your opinion Andrew but I doubt it was just done by V'landys .....however he has actually bothered to have a long hard look at the survey that was done last year and if you listen to shows like Talk'n'Sport you may discover that most of the things fans have been wanting fixed have been covered at length on such shows.... You could never get Greenberg onto such shows to answer the fans questions and on the very rare and I mean rare occasion he agreed to be interviewed by Graham Hughes Greenberg evaded the questions and gave the audience nothing
Andrew
Guest
I'm really suprised that people are so comfortable with a guy coming in and removing the CEO and then going and making a tirad of changes that impact the fabric of the game and the integrity of the competition (rules officials and the draw). Starting to see why Greenberg jumped - he knew what Vlandys was doing lacked integrity and refused to action what Vlandys wanted. Add to that his total lack of empathy to the global crisis and I imagine he would be pretty hard to work for.
Andrew
Guest
Vlandys just rigged the draw to suit him and made some rule changes without (or with minimal) consultation. You want to talk about distain?!
Nick
Roar Guru
The absolute best are on $300k. Base wage is $105k for full time refs. No idea what touchies get.
Nat
Roar Guru
$20 a minute? Doesn't seem like a lot but if that's how they are going to claim they are renumerated, means that a ref getting one game a week = $36k pa (sans finals & rep allocation). 8 games a round with 8 different refs equals the "less than $300,000 a year." $288k to be precise. If the refs are on $36k pa, they have bigger issues to lodge with Fair Work than this. From what I understand, and happy to be corrected, the refs are on approx $200kpa. Therefore, standing 8 of them down saves significantly more than their union/lawyers are proclaiming.
ian Cameron
Guest
I think the referees are being led down the garden path by someone seeking his five minutes of fame . They need to look around all permanent employees have been retained as opposed to lots of people out there who are now out of work. Every employer is entitled to restructure his business when cost savings are needed to ensure they are able survive into the future. These guys need to park their egos and be thankful they have a job. Life will never be the same again after this massive change to all our lives
Albo
Roar Rookie
I have been a staunch supporter of V'landys and the tremendous efforts he has made to get the re-start of the NRL against plenty of negative odds and lots of loose ends. But I am afraid I just don't see the point of him adding another likely impediment to the re-start process by changing from the 2 refs system right now ? Surely we could have waited for that change till the end of this season ? After getting all the State Governments & Health authorities, players, TV sponsors all sorted , we now risk the re-start through a handful of concerned NRL referees ?
Noosa Duck
Roar Rookie
simple fact is the survey they took at the end of last season showed clearly that the majority of fans wanted to return to one referee. Not only that many of us commented that the lines people needed to do a far better job and stop relying on the bunker to make decisions for them. Whatsmore, one would have to think that the referees and their association have had their heads in the sand if they thought that V'Landy's was going to continue to treat the fans with the sort of disdain like Grant & Greenberg had done for so long.
Daniel John
Roar Pro
I don’t think the referees will have much of a leg to stand on if they try and fight this. It’s corona season, and I’d imagine the “act of god” clause would be enabled to justify laying off all your casual refs, from 2020 onward even. They also believe the amount saved is between 500k and 3mil - id say even saving the minimum is a win for the NRL
Paul
Roar Guru
It would be nice to get a copy of the current agreement to get an idea about exactly what it says around this issue. As it stands, Del Vecchio and V'landys appear to be poles apart in their views on this matter