No doubt, you’ve been angry when a decision has gone against your footy side. Trust me, every weekend multiple decisions leave us spellbound for days trying to work out.
To eliminate this outrage and in a desperate attempt to promote accountability, the NRL and head of football Graham Annesley introduced a weekly briefing in 2019 to explain and try and answer questions on the state of the game.
Now the problem here is, that it turns from accountability over decisions, to the media openly attacking the game and the officials over the specific calls that Annesley mentions.
This isn’t the first time that the NRL referees’ decisions have been put under a microscope. In 2015 and 2016, the NRL media team conducted short videos with the then referees’ boss Tony Archer going over select decisions from the weekend in a very similar style to what Annesley does now.
However, the answers were short, succinct and to the point. Not an avalanche of PR spiel that Annesley’s briefings have turned into in recent times.
(Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
Let’s look at a few recent examples of the farce that some of these briefings have turned into in recent times.
The first one is the over-hour-long question and answer session held in the aftermath of the Cowboys v Tigers debacle last season.
Yes, it was a howler and they got the decision wrong. But, instead of being upfront about it immediately. Annesley began with a PR disaster class that any blind punter at home could argue against. It’s not a good look for the game, we’d rather have honesty at these briefings. Not technical hoopla that only a few people can understand and ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Then there was last Monday’s briefing which can only be described as a confusing mess that left everyone with a sore head. There was the weird and obscure explanation of the Nelson Asofa-Solomona try where he said it was a technical decision that the bunker got CORRECT but muddled himself ad nauseum by trying to make the decision sound incorrect if you took it to a panel of 100 people they’d say it was incorrect. Just say what the decision is and move on.
This can of worms that are created by the NRL’s spin doctor is so confusing and frustrating for the fans. We just want to know in very simple terms for every fan to understand if the decision was right or wrong.
This was followed up by a passionate defence of a call that seemed even more tighter and controversial. The David Fifita overturn in the shadows of half-time. He chastised the media for creating the circus around decisions when in reality, he is asking for it by holding these Monday briefings where he has to explain himself and throw the officials under a bus at his control.
He also will defend them to the point where the fans have simply lost interest and have turned off the NRL website. On Monday we got that defence of the match officials which got to the point of questioning the media’s reporting on decisions saying “it brings the game into disrepute.”
However, it’s the media’s job to question these contentious decisions and with the obscure explanations, of course, questions are going to come Graham …
Back to the main point at hand. NRL refereeing is the hardest job in Australian sport. The microscope in which decisions are scrutinised is the highest in professional sport, with every detail of a call investigated, such as where the mark is for a try, where the scrum should be held, how a ball is knocked out and too many more to mention.
Leading into the finals, that expectation will only get higher for the officials to be correct. So the PR spin doctoring going on at NRL HQ is only going to get more and more chaotic.
The NRL needs to make its position clear, either it has a fiasco like we had on Monday or make it simpler for fans to understand the detail of a decision and whether it’s correct or incorrect.
A solution is to return to a three-minute summary of decisions from the game with Jared Maxwell (refs boss) explaining decisions in easy terms to fans available every Monday post the NRL internal review of all decisions.
That would not please everyone, but the media must have their say in questioning the decision-making of officials in those calls as well. So it’s important to achieve the right balance and simply as it is right now isn’t the answer.
Also, a spring of accountability for mistakes that could cost teams dearly in the run home for the finals. Drew Oultram paid the price for his forward pass miss in Origin II, while Chris Sutton hasn’t been sighted in the middle since his howler at Penrith a month ago.
This has to happen across the board or else, the issues I mentioned a month ago will continue to persist and the NRL will have blood on their hands with the wasted development of referees with a plethora of talent still waiting outside the main core of referees used every week.
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