The easy fix NRL refuses to make to protect refs from accusations of bias

While many of the accusations levelled at the officiating in the NRL are well off the mark, being the closed shop they are exacerbates the criticisms levelled at them and limits their ability to move forward effectively.  

British politician Lord Acton wrote to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887 in regard to the doctrine of Papal infallibility – the concept that the Pope was not capable of error or could be open to question.  Acton was – and remained – a devout Roman Catholic even though he was unsuccessful in having that doctrine repealed.

He knew that for his beloved church to go forward in the best and strongest way that removing itself from criticism or debate was not the way to do it. He knew that approach would erode both its efficacy, influence, as well as the respect and trust it could command.

The National Rugby League faces the same problem in regard to the running of their organisation. As I’ve raised before, the NRL is effectively a private company. It is not answerable to any external authority or independent auditors.

They are a law unto themselves. Their own little Vatican City in Moore Park.

ARLC Chairman Peter V’Landys, on taking the reins at the end of 2019 singled out addressing the officiating of the games as his number one priority.

“To be frank, we need to improve our refereeing,” he said. “That’s the biggest single problem at the moment.  Being from the racing industry there’s one thing that I’ve learnt, it’s that punters or fans don’t like to be ripped off. You can’t have them walk away thinking that they’ve been ripped off. 

“We need to fix our systems and do whatever we can so that the fan walks away happy and content that he’s had a fair crack, and not walk away thinking that he’s been ripped off.”

(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

V’Landys was spot on when he identified looking after the feelings of the fans of the NRL as the priority.

However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of 2020 saw the focus – necessarily – shift to keeping the game going and honouring the broadcast deal.

But the punters can not continue to be subjugated. The almighty broadcast deal only exists because of the punters.

Two and a bit years later and I’d contend that the officiating of the game is now held in lower regard than when V’Landys commenced, and that was directly in the wake of Ben Cummins and Gerry Sutton’s 2019 “six again” fiasco.

Punters being punters, they will feel ripped off when they perceive that their side has got the rough end of the pineapple from the whistle blowers. That feeling is given even more momentum when there is the overriding impression that the officials and those that manage them aren’t held to account by any independent body – as is the case with the NRL referees.

While match officials come up through their local refereeing ranks and then matriculate into the NSW Cup or Queensland Cup, who is chosen to enter the ranks of the NRL officials is entirely at the behest of NRL HQ, specifically Jared Maxwell, Graham Annesley and Andrew Abdo. How they get trained, who gets what games, what the priorities are and how issues are dealt with are all handled without any external guidance, input or authority.

As a result, that distrust and dissatisfaction in regard to the match officials department has grown shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

Australians historically haven’t been too fond of authority or willing to blindly follow dictates from incontestable sources. It isn’t in our make-up at all. It didn’t go down too well on the Ballarat goldfields, with the World War One Diggers or pretty much anywhere we have sensed injustice over-riding people getting a fair go.

This characteristic lives in the heart of our national character.

For many of us NRL fans our lives are unspectacular. While our lot in life might not be all that bad, we aren’t millionaires, or rock stars or famous influencers. Our holidays will be in caravan parks. Our special dinners will be at the local club. And there is nothing at all wrong with that. Some of the best times are eating a parmi and sleeping in a Viscount.

Queen Victoria once said really sage words along these lines: “Give my people beer. Plentiful beer. Good beer. Cheap beer. And we will not have revolution in our time.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Vladimir Lenin commented that, “Every society is three meals from chaos.”

We punters don’t need that much to keep us happy. We need to have a roof over our head, food to eat and a pastime to enjoy. Queen Vicky thought drunkenness was a worthy pastime. Many still agree.

For many of us, a large part of the passion in our lives is wrapped up in supporting our rugby league team.

While some may comment that it is not a pursuit that is of any tangible benefit to the advancement of the human race, I disagree.

Passion is the very best of things pretty much wherever it is found. For the most part passion is about striving for a goal and/or engaging in something for the wholehearted love of it.

(Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)

It is the passion of us rugby league fans that made the game worth fighting over. When Murdoch and Packer faced off in the 1990s Super League war, it was all about the money they could make out of our passion.

It is that passion that means we sign up to Foxtel and Kayo. It is that passion that has us tune in to watch Friday Night Footy. It is that passion that buys our seats in the stadium and the merchandise we wear.

The passion of the punters is the most essential part of the NRL. The NRL wouldn’t exist without it.

A smart administration would absolutely prioritise nurturing and caring for that passion.

A smart administration.

Anyone who takes us and our passion for granted or treats it like a secondary concern will only have themselves to blame as that passion starts to find new homes in other sports and pursuits.

However, while our passion is a wonderful thing but it can also see us become prone to a phenomenon called confirmation bias.

Punters – especially those who support the lesser sides – can start to believe that they get a raw deal from the referees, that the officials have favourites, as well as players and clubs they have a set against.

It isn’t hard to see how punters can put themselves and their beloved NRL teams into the have not / unloved category when, in the age of a salary cap that is meant to facilitate a level playing field for all 16 teams, the following are true:

• 71 of 96  (74 per cent) preliminary final spots in the NRL era have been taken by just eight sides
• 12 of the 24 NRL wooden spoons (50 per cent) have been taken by just four sides
• 15 of the 24 premiers (62.5 per cent) have come from just four clubs
• One of the Roosters and Storm has played in 17 of the 24 NRL deciders to date (71 per cent)
• The Wests Tigers haven’t played in the finals since 2011 and have only played in three finals series in total
• The New Zealand Warriors and Gold Coast Titans have only played in 13 finals series between them.

Add to those facts the competition being run by a regime that doesn’t seem to be accountable to anyone and you get a very fertile ground for perceptions of bias to proliferate.

Let me state strenuously that, while there will always be those amongst us fans that do believe it to be the case, I am categorically of the belief that no corruption or genuine bias exists amongst any of the NRL match officials.

However, I just as strongly believe that confirmation bias does exist. We all have a tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of our existing beliefs or theories.

As sports fans we often have preconceived ideas about what is going to happen in a game. When we watch the game we do it through that prism. The officials are in no way immune to that same tendency.

For the purposes of transparency, I am a Canberra Raiders supporter. While I strive on air to provide the most unbiased call of the game that I can, as well as write my thoughts in the same way, the reality is that my allegiance can influence my opinions and how I view events. I can be subject to confirmation bias.

And so it was that last Saturday I sat down to watch my struggling Raiders play the mighty Melbourne Storm. All of us Green faithful knew that if we were to somehow get a win we’d have to play very well and not be on the wrong side of referee Gerry Sutton’s 50/50 calls.

It is easy to see how Sutton could become unconsciously biased. The Storm are the most successful team of the NRL era. They play a very dynamic style of play. To stop them teams have to be at their best and if I were a referee I’d on the lookout for them engaging in foul play to help them do it. Further, the Purple Horde have a brilliant, disciplined defence. To score points against them is very difficult. It is unsurprising when sides can’t often do it and I probably wouldn’t be overly vigilant in checking their methods of holding their line.

As I watched the match unfold my confirmation bias was continually serving up examples of refereeing confirmation bias, for example the Raiders conceding piggy back penalties for offside and hold downs for incidents that looked no different to what the Storm were doing. Getting progressively more annoyed, I tweeted my frustrations, specifically referencing confirmation bias.

In one engagement I observed that in order to overturn the Semi Valemei no try ruling in the first half, the Bunker had used multiple angles and replays, taking significant time, whereas to overturn the Jahrome Hughes try needed just two angles and virtually no time.

In another I questioned how Reimis Smith didn’t get sin binned for being offside from Jack Wighton’s quick penalty tap. Many of us felt that if the jerseys had been swapped there would have been a good chance that it would have been a penalty and a sin bin.

Then ex-NRL referee Gavin Badger engaged with me.

And the Badge is right. The number one influence on a referee is the advantage a home crowd provides.

I dug deeper and found this great study: The Issue of Unconscious Bias in Referee Decisions in the National Rugby League.

This research paper from September 2021 was written by Dr Kath O’Brien, from the Faculty of Health at Queensland University of Technology, and Emeritus Professor John Mangan, from the Australian Institute for Business and Economics at the University of Queensland. It goes into specific detail on the matter of confirmation bias in NRL referees, broadly supporting what Gavin Badger asserted. I recommend that you read it.

What I wanted to know though was whether the paper had taken into account the effectively closed shop that the NRL match officials exist in. I contacted Professor Mangan to ask him directly. He confirmed that factor had not been considered but that variant could very likely lead to an increased incidence of confirmation or unconscious bias on the part of the referees.

“There are a number of issues with professional sporting officials effectively being in a closed shop without the presence of any real independent arbiter. That system absolutely enhances inefficiencies through there being far less discussion, as well as probably leading to a reduction in the available talent,” Professor Mangan said.

“If any professional organisation is closed to external or independent influence or comment it will almost certainly lead to them having a narrow focus, being rules driven and – worst of all – being content with how things are going.”

Professor Mangan was blunt in regard to whether it was reasonable for NRL fans to level accusations of confirmation bias.

“If clubs and spectators know that the officials are not answerable to any external review they can certainly be forgiven for calling out incidents of confirmation bias,” he said.

“In fact, the organisation should fully expect that state of affairs. Further, the idea that coaches get fined for speaking their mind in regard to the officials is a very strange situation.

“It is a professional sport with big money involved. It isn’t park football. It is more than reasonable that officials are scrutinised and held to some accountability – just as the coaches and their players themselves are – especially if there is no accountability to an independent authority in regard to their performance.”

Mangan wanted to be very clear where confirmation bias would have the most impact.

“When it comes to confirmation bias, you have to take into account that the lesser sides are almost certainly going to concede more points, score fewer points and concede more penalties. Confirmation bias doesn’t effect that situation very much at all. Where you will see it is in the 50/50 calls. Decisions where the ruling could have gone either way is where you’ll see confirmation bias most clearly. Those decisions are the ones that get made – or don’t get made – when things happen very quickly.”

While the Bunker replays to check that tries have legitimately been scored have a lot of critics, I am not one of them. I see them as a way of getting lots of those 50/50s right.

However, if an incident occurs outside of a scoring play it is fully at the mercy of confirmation bias, or at least the justified perception that it has affected the adjudicating.

In order for an organisation to function to its best ability it can not cut itself off from the impact of independent arbiters. Yet that is exactly what the National Rugby League has done in regard to their game day officials. The way the rules are set up it is incredibly unlikely that the clubs can force any change to the way things are.

For the National Rugby League to prosper it can not just be focused on money. It needs the best people in the key roles who are committed to making our game the best it can be.

For the sake of the game.

Because they love the game.

I know what those type of people look like as my father was one. My father was the architect and founder of Questacon. His drive and passion was to deliver to the people of Australia a hands-on science centre because he knew it would be really beneficial for years and years to come. He was a man of rare integrity and amazing drive.

He passed away in January and I’m still mourning.

It makes a guy take stock.

I feel like I’ve been screaming into the NRL void for a decade now for little to no effect. My agenda has been to try and influence the game of rugby league in Australia to become a fairer and more equitable for the benefit of all the teams and their fans.

Achieve that and surely the money will follow.

However, even when I’ve been spot on in my criticism, even when my most dire predictions have proved spot on, the NRL has changed nothing.

The referees are still a closed shop. Consistency of decisions and player suspensions seems worse than ever. In spite of the debacles we’ve seen, trainers still have access to the playing field far in excess of that which is allowed by any other professional sport in the world – and I cannot see who that needless risk benefits.

I am so tired of it and I need a break.

I could go through the motions each week of examining the individual trees that make up the NRL forest, churning out content. However, my wonderful editors (Tony Harper, Ben Conkey and Paul Suttor now, Daniel Jeffrey, Stirling Coates and Patrick Effeney previously) deserve and expect better from me – and you readers do too.

I started writing for The Roar in 2012 and I’ve loved it. I’ve loved the soapbox it has given me. I’ve (mostly) loved the interactions with the Roarers. I’ve loved the critics who’ve become my friends. I love those who’ve debated in the best spirit. And I love that you’ve kept me honest when I’ve been cynical or thrown cheap shots.

Till we meet again. Thanks.