OFFICIALLY OUTRAGED
Discussion becoming more about refereeing than the game itself
WE HAVE always feared the NRL premiership would be decided by referees, not players.
The past couple of weeks have proven this theory correct.
On Friday night the Manly Sea Eagles bowed out of the finals in highly controversial circumstances.
Jake Trbojevic was sinbinned towards the end for a professional foul. It was a debatable decision but probably the correct one. Souths scored two tries while he was off and came from behind to win.
They won the penalties 9-3 and for the last 54 minutes, did not give away one penalty.
Des Hasler said his team was dudded. Gus Gould calls for the sacking of the video referee.
Such was the outrage, it was still the most viewed story on our website yesterday morning, not that Parramatta Eels fans wanted to read about their 32nil whitewash to Storm.
No one left ANZ Stadium talking about the footy. No one on social media was discussing anything but refereeing.
The Trbojevic sin-binning became a major issue because of the previous week when two Canberra Raiders players did exactly the same thing against Melbourne Storm. Yet both times their players stayed on the field. As a result, the referees Ashely Klein and Chris Sutton were sacked but that didn’t help Storm, who lost a tight game.
They had to back up and play sudden-death football against Parramatta on Saturday night while the Raiders got the weekend off. The opportunity to freshen up could mean the difference winning or losing the grand final.
Inconsistency is the problem and has been for 25 rounds of the competition and two weeks of finals. It is driving fans away from the game. I get dozens of emails every week from longtime fans who have had enough.
The two-referee system does not work. It makes decisionmaking more confusing.
In the Storm v Raiders game the two referees disagreed on the professional fouls.
Officials in our multi-million-dollar bunker did nothing about it.A week later, back at AAMI Park, during the Storm v Eels clash, and again we’re talking about the referees.
Cameron Smith gets sinbinned for lightly slapping Reed Mahoney while trying to free himself. It was a nothing incident. Gus blows up again: “It’s a disgrace.”
Storm were ahead 22-nil so it wasn’t going to affect the result. But like last weekend, it could have.
Earlier, Maika Sivo and Kane Evans shoulder-charged two Storm players. Sivo followed his up with a cheap shot on Ryan Papenhuyzen while he was on the ground. These were sin-bin offences earlier in the year. Not on Saturday night.
In July, Kalyn Ponga was sinbinned for a shoulder charge. In August Nathan Brown was binned for a shot on Dallin Watene-Zelezniak. Andrew Fifita got 10 minutes for a shoulder charge against the Warriors.
Fortunately the game has a new independent commission chairman in Peter V’landys who understands the importance of fixing this mess.