Golden point is pointless - it's a solution to a problem that never existed and should be scrapped

Wow, wasn’t that Knights-Panthers game a cracker? Wasn’t the finish sensational? Wasn’t it absolutely thrilling to see it decided in extra time by a field goal from that human ice sculpture Nathan Cleary? Doesn’t the golden point system add a spectacular dimension to the sport of rugby league that enhances everyone’s experience and makes our game something much more than it otherwise would be?

Well, no. Not at all.

There were many things to enjoy about that game – the bravery of the Knights, the entertaining creativity of the referee, the exciting advances the Panthers have made in the field of tactical tonsorialism – but the way it ended isn’t one of them.

Golden point is an abomination and those who enjoy it are in dire need of deprogramming.

This has always been the case, but the hype that the league media makes around golden point games is so loud and shrill that it’s managed to drown out more sensible voices.

Nathan Cleary kicks the winning field goal in golden point to beat Newcastle. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

I hold little hope that the Knights-Panthers game, which showed up one of the concept’s many flaws – ie, that whoever wins the toss prior to extra time beginning has a massive advantage and a team can be beaten in extra time without even getting a chance to touch the ball – will actually turn this tide, but hope springs eternal, does it not?

The game demonstrated that of course the golden point system is not a “fair” way to decide a game. Even in cases where the field goal doesn’t come at the end of the first set of six, it’s basically a lottery. You could replace it with a penalty shoot-out and it would be just as good a test of which team deserved to win. But the problems of golden point go well beyond fairness.

The thing about golden point is that it is, first and foremost, a solution to a problem that never existed.

Having draws in regular-season games was never a problem: indeed, the fact that even now GP time ends after 10 minutes and the draw is then just accepted proves there is no inherent issue with scores finishing level at the end of a match.

Never, in the many decades of pre-GP rugby league, did the fact that sometimes games finished in draws interfere with the enjoyment, the spectacle or the integrity of the sport. Two teams battle to the last, and can’t be separated. Well, they get a point each. That’s fine.

I repeat: that’s FINE. In fact, draws are often the most thrilling games of all, and although obviously the teams that play them may be disappointed not to get a win, they are not as disappointed as if they’d lost, and who the hell thinks that the rules of a sport should be designed to prevent disappointment anyway?

A draw is not always the fairest of results, as frequently one team has been superior, but couldn’t get their noses in front at full-time. But wins and losses aren’t always fair either, and in any case it won’t make it any fairer if that superior team loses because the other side was the first to get a drop kick away.

As I say: a draw is FINE.

Now, obviously in finals, you can’t have a draw. A winner has to be declared in a play-off, and we can all agree that we’re long past the time when we were OK with everyone just coming back a few days later to play the game over again. But then. we were past that time way before golden point arrived: remember the 1989 Grand Final?

Remember Steve Jackson’s epic try in the dying minutes? Under golden point rules, that try never happens: Chris O’Sullivan kicks a field goal early in extra time and the game is over. Would that have made that game more memorable, do you think? But I digress…

Point is: yes, we need extra time in finals. But no, we don’t need golden point – at least not until all other avenues have been exhausted.

And that brings me to my next point:

Having decided the non-existent problem of draws had to be solved, the powers that be then struck upon literally the worst possible way to solve it: a way that actually makes the supposed purpose of the rule – a more exciting game – less likely.

The thought process goes like this:

If you’ve got draws, you should just accept them.

If for some reason you can’t accept them, you should play a period of extra time to see if a winner can be determined. This period should be played under exactly the same rules as the rest of the game: whoever’s in front at the end of the period wins.

If for some reason you can’t accept the playing-out of the whole period of time, and want the end of the game to be declared immediately, golden snitch-style, by the advent of a particular play from one team or the other, then what you do is institute, not golden point, but golden TRY.

The reason for this is obvious. When you have extra time, you actually want to encourage the teams to play rugby league. You want them to strive for the prime directive of the game: to score tries.

If you’ve decided on a gimmick to make the game more exciting, why on earth would you choose to put that gimmick in a form that guarantees the combatants will engage in the dullest kind of play possible?

Golden point doesn’t encourage daring play and attacking flair: it rewards caution and dour conservative play. Bash it up the middle, work your way into position, take the shot. That is every team’s golden point playbook.

The occasional rare instance of creativity leading to a try in golden point is the result of accident – of a team’s plan going awry and forcing improvisation. This can be exciting to watch, but it should be clear that it is, in every instance, an anomaly: golden point is designed to discourage creativity.

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So, of all the possible ways to decide a drawn game – leave it a draw, extra time, golden try, golden point – the NRL has decided on the very worst.

Ideally, the only way golden point would ever become a possibility in a game would be in a final, and as a last resort. Ideally, after 10 minutes each way of extra time, there would be another five minutes each way, and if scores were still level, there would be another five minutes each way under golden try rules.

Then, and ONLY then, would I – and let’s remember that I am a professional pundit and therefore an Expert – grudgingly accept that maybe we can move to golden point in the interests of the game finishing before midnight.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what I say. At some point, brains turned by the demands of media folk – and I’m not saying these media folk’s names rhymed with “Bill Pooled”, but not necessarily not saying it either – who had a peevish personal objection to draws as a concept, the NRL decided to abandon fairness and principle and introduce an obnoxious artifice that 1) is conceived purely to manufacture faux “entertainment” rather than a satisfactory result; and 2) was so poorly thought out that it actually militates against entertaining play.

So, we need to junk it. And we never will, I know. But that doesn’t mean we can’t keep complaining. This is rugby league: we will ALWAYS keep complaining.