Here's my latest bitch on the NRL refereeing, and it kind of encompasses everything bitch I have previously bitched about.
As a whole, it seems to me that the refereeing is not only reactionary at the top level, but lazy. By that, I mean that they let things deteriorate to a point where everyone is sick of players doing X, so they eventually have a crackdown or a "rule change" to fix the problem. If they'd just do their job thoroughly from the start, there wouldn't need to be crackdowns. Here's some recent examples:
* Wrestling: Here's a simple fix - when the ref calls "held", all players need to get off immediately. IMMEDIATELY. Penalising the "peel" helps somewhat, but again it's a belated reaction to letting them lie in the ruck in the first place. "Oh but with that many tacklers in a ruck it's impossible to get off immediately. They'll get penalised every ruck". That's your problem, coaches. Less defenders, less wrestling, manipulation, and twisting up. Get twisted up, the player can't play the ball immediately, penalty. Could it be exploited by the ball-carrier? Sure it could. Coach your teams to avoid it.
* Video Ref: My most vocal bitch. Instead of pretending there was no mistake by the refs, they completely overhauled the way it was to be done. Stupidly, had the new system been employed with Foran's "Hand Of God" try, and the ref called it a no-try (as was the consensus at the time), awarding the try would STILL be the wrong answer! Go back to the old system, where if the ref doesn't know, go to the video ref and say "**** knows". The mistake they made was the "benefit of the doubt", which should only be used on a 50:50 call. Instead they bullshitted and said that because there was "some doubt" the try was awarded. Was it 50:50 doubt? **** no, it was 5% doubt at best. They fucked up, just say sorry.
* Play The Ball: How many PTB's are done properly these days? **** all. Wasn't there a crackdown a couple of years ago? And they've just let it go back to the same old shit. Why? Because if they penalised them all there would be a penalty every 2 PTB's. Tonight, Ferguson even played it from a restart (so everyone was stopped and standing watching), the ref was right next to him, and he just rolled it between his legs. Lazy fucking ref just let it go. I saw about 3 tonight too where they played it at a 90 degree angle, not backwards like it should. No penalties.
* "Shot Clock": Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there already a 40 second limit in place for drop-outs? When the **** was that scrapped? This talk of shot clocks next year for drop-outs and scums just smells of shit that should already have been managed, or already have rules in place, but because of laziness they now have to bring it in AGAIN.
So why do the refs let players get away with stuff? Because of this ridiculous notion of letting a game "flow". That "putting the whistle away" is better for the spectacle. And the argument that if the ref penalises every infringement then there will be no game to watch. **** that. The onus should on the players to play within the rules, not the ref to have to "manage" the penalties given in order to let the game proceed. And this evening up bullshit. The refs are fucking terrified of looking biased or having coaches berate them for uneven penalty counts. If a team is undisciplined or deliberately push the rules, penalise them! Recently coaches have been going to the refs bosses questioning decisions. The bosses have been pointing out how the penalties were valid. The coaches then say "yeah, so how come the other team was not penalised for doing exactly the same thing on these occasions here?". That's what you get when refs "manage" games and try to even it up. You get a team like the Roosters who happily give away blatant penalties when under the pump. Absolutely blatant, to the point of being deliberate gamesmanship and worthy of sin-bins. But to even out the count, they'll penalise the opposition for the tiniest little indiscretion or, worse, a blatant milk. The Roosters will get away with 4 or 5 of exactly the same thing in the next 5 minutes, with the ref letting them go because they know they'll eventually pull out another blatant one and the ref can blow that, even it up, and look all unbiased when the ref reports go to the boss.
TLDR, if a player infringes, penalise. For everything. Every penalty that does not get blown is another point the coaches will push and as we've seen, it'll fester and become a blight on the game. Penalise it every time. At the moment it's a trick of pushing the rules the furthest to win the game. If there's penalties everywhere, it won't take coaches long to realise that the team that gets penalised the least wins the game. Actively cleaning it up will become the winning tactic. Problem solved.
