Melbourne quick to punish the Titans for a rookie error

Yep it does confirm it – the freeze frame at 16 seconds makes it unequivocal. He wasn’t square. At that point his head is obscured from view by Campbell's head whilst Campbell still has his foot on the ball meaning he has to be to the side of Campbell. So his middle is over Campbells edge His right foot is now angled, because he’s lunged slightly to try to create the appearance he’s square, but it’s in line with the ball which is the middle of the play of the ball. So his right edge is over the middle His left foot is planted well outside of where campbell’s playing the ball and is closer to the centre of his prone team mate and remains outside the entire time. So his left edge is outside campbell’s, his middle is on campbell’s edge and his right edge is over campbell’s middle – in other words it’s as square as the vertical alignment of bricks in a wall.

Brendon, I keep coming back to the Billy Slater , drop and kick but you can go back to the Brett Hodgeson knock on in 2006 State of Origin if you like. Ball comes down from kick , Hodgeson puts his arms out ball goes between his arms , off his chest , forward. He picks it up and passes, it and NSW scores. Now that's been a knock on for a hundred years. Everyone calls it a knock-on, commentators, even NSW fans. The bunker looks at it and says ' It didn't touch his hands , off the chest , so play on. Try confirmed. Now if you do a ' letter of the law ' interpretation, the bunker is right.. But just like the ' real ' law , RL rules consists of two parts. First is the written law in the rule book . The second is precedent. This is the way judges ( referees ) have interpreted things in the past. Its why in the Hodgeson case virtually everyone calls knock on. It's why virtually everyone in the Billy Slater case goes ' it's a drop then kick not a drop kick'. I have not seen an interpretation like last night's for many, many years. They always call penalty. Just as the Hodgeson one forever more went back to being a knock on , the next player you see picking a ball up like Bromich , will be penalised. The good news is Lockyer used the Hodgeson incident to inspire a QLD surge back into the game and in case you don't remember , Hodgeson threw a wayward pass at the end that Lockyer swooped on to win the game. I'm not a ' believer' but I did say a small thank you prayer after that game.

Was it a penalty though? Letter of the law, is it a penalty?

The next one will be called a penalty as they always are. Love for some.

It’s not like he just ran 90 metres down field. He’s on his own 10 and had just got the ball back while the team were defending their line.

A lot of Storm hate. Watch the replay, Bromwich is square (he adjusts himself to ensure thats the case), as Campbell plays the ball, he walks over it to the left. He opens it up for Bromwich to take it. 16 seconds, freeze it, it confirms it.

I would have thought that would have been a penalty for the Titans, marker not square. Watched the game and the 50:50 calls went Storm's way. Cummins obviously wants to be in the running for the Finals and Grand Final. and too many penalties against the Storm would cost him his job.

9 times out of 10 the ref penalises Bromwich for not being square at marker. It was borderline in this case (quite possibly an example of the confirmation bias written about in another post today)

I think Jayden Campbell had every right to expect someone to be at dummy half by the time he got up to play the ball.