Warriors warn of loophole in tackle rules
Warriors assistant coach Tony Iro says referees need to clamp down on teams abusing the new six-again rule, after the Panthers pushed the boundaries on Friday night.
The Warriors lost 26-0 at Campbelltown Stadium and although Iro said the refereeing of the six-again rule wasn’t why they lost, the club has taken it up with NRL officials.
When the NRL resumed last weekend, lawmakers decided to introduce a six-again rule for infringes at rucks, rather than award a penalty and NRL coaches haven’t taken long to exploit it.
Defending teams are increasingly making infringements on the first tackle of a set, knowing that if they get away with it, they’ll slow the opposition down, but if they get caught, the punishment is minor, because the attacking team is still early in the count.
It’s a low-risk, high-reward strategy and for the Panthers on Friday it paid off.
‘‘It’s definitely something that needs to be looked at. We had six, six-again calls on the first tackle,’’ Iro said.
‘‘All credit to the Panthers, if you can slow down that first tackle and get your line set, it can make a difference in terms of how you defend the rest of the set.
‘‘But if they’re going to call six again on play one a number of times, then something has to be done about it. Obviously that’s not in our hands, but Stephen [Kearney] has already brought that to the attention of the whistle-blowers and we’ll have to see how that goes, otherwise most teams will be doing it.’’
After the match Kearney said that he’d been told by the NRL that referees would clamp down hard on repeated infringements on the first play and offenders would be sent to the bin.
But that didn’t happen for any Panthers players and the more referees let teams get away with it, the more coaches will instruct their players to do it.
‘‘I’m not sure about the statistics in all of the other games, but certainly it was prevailing in our game,’’ Iro said.
‘‘Coaches are always going to be pushing the boundaries every week and with these new rules, these things will happen.’’
The team would have to adapt to the tactic, which did not affect the result, he said. The Warriors made too many errors.
Warriors hooker Wayde Egan ran the ball for just 10 metres on Friday night, while his counterpart in the Panthers, Api Koroisau, ran for 107m.
Over the four games this season, Egan has run for a total of 54m. Iro said they want Egan to run more, but feel he’s not getting the chances to attack.
‘‘Last night he probably didn’t get the opportunity,’’ he said.
‘‘We were trying to claw our way off our goal line for most of it.
‘‘I’m pretty sure that’s what he wants to do and certainly part of the game plan is that we want him to do that as well.
‘‘Ideally, the hookers are running when the opposition forward pack is tired. We couldn’t quite get to that stage against Penrith, where they controlled most of the possession in the first half, basically we were bringing the ball off our line. He’s a good runner of the football, we’ve just got to give him the opportunity to do it against a tired forward pack.’’
‘‘Last night, errors and discipline didn’t allow us to do that.’’
Next up for the Warriors is the Cowboys on Friday night. David Fusitu’a and Ken Maumalo have already been ruled out of the game while Agnatius Paasi and Lachlan Burr should be back as long as they pass their HIA protocols.
Iro said they’re hopeful centre Peta Hiku will return, but feel it could be too soon for him.
‘‘We’d like to think he’s chance for Friday, but realistically not for another week or two,’’ he said.
‘‘He’s running OK, but with a rib injury it’s pretty painful and difficult to breathe and with the current nature of the game, breathing is quite important.’’
‘‘Coaches are always going to be pushing the boundaries every week.’’ Warriors coach Stephen Kearney