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One of the worst officiating moments of the year has brought the debate back on forward passes, with two egregious decisions in Brisbane’s Preliminary Final win over the Warriors.
Reece Walsh had poked his nose through the Kiwi line and looked to find his winger, Selwyn Cobbo, but passed the ball yards forward.
Nothing was called by referee Gerard Sutton or his touch judges, and as if to compound the error, a further pass in the move from Cobbo to Jordan Riki also looked dubious.
The Bunker is unable to rule on forward passes, even though in this case, it was glaringly obvious what had occurred.
Warriors coach Andrew Webster was asked about the decision, and while he refused to be drawn into the debate on technology or rule changes, he remained flabbergasted by the call itself, though he stopped short of saying had a bearing on the result.
“The forward pass was so wrong it wasn’t funny,” he said.
“But they made a line break, we allowed the line break and the forward pass comes off the back of hat. We weren’t defending well during that period.
“The forward pass is wrong but we’re not crying over that, it certainly didn’t cost us the game.
“The thing for me on the referees and decision this year, is that we have to give ourselves opportunities to win and we’ve got to take the referees out of it.
“Those things are hard. I know the boys are trying hard and get frustrated by decisions, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to take some ownership of the way that we could have done things better.
“I’m going to stay solid by that, it’s been our motto all year.”
Other commentators were less kind to the officials, with Michael Ennis suggesting that the speed of Walsh might have done for the linesman.
“This might sound ridiculous,” said the summariser. “But this is the speed of Reece Walsh that the actual touch judge couldn’t keep up with him, this was two metres forward, blatantly forward.
“The touch judge fell two or three metres off the pace, he just couldn’t keep himself in line with Walsh and it’s an absolute howler.
“I know we can’t use the Bunker but there’s three officials there and the ball blatantly goes forward.”
Over on 9, Cameron Smith agreed.
“The touchie was about 15 metres behind him, he couldn’t keep up,” said the Queensland legend.
“That’s gone about three metres forward, that’s an absolute shocker but anyway, you cannot review forward passes, you cannot take that back.”
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