Round 3 Discussion

[Big Pete]

Penrith cannot get out of their own end at this point.

This set is going to be crucial.

If Penrith hold Sydney to 8 points, it will give them confidence.

 

[Big Pete]

That was a timely try by Idris.

Very typical of Wallace too. Nothing fancy, just put the kick up and challenged the Roosters backs to a contest. In the end, Mansour wanted the ball more and was able to put Idris over in the corner.

I reckon the Roosters will be upset with that scoreline. They were the better team for the majority but their execution has been letting them down and they've spent too much toying with the Panthers rather than asking any tough questions. I thought they really should have scored before the Idris try where they had about 4 or 5 sets on the Panthers line but they continually let themselves down. In the end, Guerra gets impatient goes for an obvious double movement and really spoiled the passage for the Chooks.

At 8-6 it's clearly anybody's game in the second half. Honestly, I'm hoping it plays out like the finals last year where the first half was really underwhelming and then the second was thrilling as any that season.

 

[Ari Gold]

I'm still trying to work out how the DWZ decision was no try!

 

[Big Pete]

The video referee must have taken beyond a reasonable doubt so far that they simply lost the plot.

That also explains the Gagai try from last night.

It's a joke though. We go from one extreme with Steve Matai to the other in the space of a few days.

It just does your head in.

Relentless effort by the Chooks. Not much to really write about them they were just strong in all the right facets and when they needed to score points they were able to get the ball out to Ferguson who's just so talented. Crazy to think that they've still got Jake Friend to come into their team.

Wasn't the best night for the Panthers. Their lack of grunt upfront was exposed, they missed Soward, couple of calls didn't go their way and I thought Segeyaro played pretty poorly by his standards. Still, to lose by 8 points isn't the worst result, I reckon a lot of teams would have conceded a lot more and I expect to see them bounce back next week against NEwcastle.

 

[Super Freak]

On the DWZ no try, I can live with that.

The on field ref ruled no try, and if you take a look at it frame by frame, there is one shot where you can see the ball is not in his hands. It doesn't show clearly whether the fingers remain on the ball before it makes contact with the ground. We don't have any cameras that can provide a clear shot that's not blurry.

The video ref pretty much had no choice.

Could you really say this is 100% conclusive to overrule the on field decision?

It can be hard to see when the image is not blown up, but you can see almost every finger is off the ball. However, it's not clear whether the index finger remains on it.

 

[Big Pete]

Fox provided more conclusive images that proved the decision should be over-turned.

It's obvious what happened. The video referee over-thought the entire situation and was looking for the tiniest hint to disallow the try when in reality it was difficult to tell live.

This is where the system is flawed.

Ideally, the referee sends something up that he's 90% sure it's a try and he just wants quick confirmation. Great but in a lot of cases where seeing referees refer these decisions upstairs without much of an idea and they may as well shrug and inform the video referee they have no idea. In this case, I don't think the referee was confident of his decision and only made a call because he had to. The video referee has then tried his best to justify the decision when really he should be impartial about the entire scenario and if the proof is substantial they should go with it.

But that isn't the biggest problem. It's the inconsistency and how it seems like referees tend to over-react after public criticism. One video referee was liberal with their interpretation of 'over-turning' a decision now the others are ultra-conservative and will follow it to a point where it just lacks common sense.

And how can you have a common game when it lacks common sense?

 

[Morkel]

Very flawed system that's been patched up on the fly. The next quick patch to fix last night would be for the ref to have the option of "video refs call" But the Nrl won't look the refs to admit they have no idea.

 

[Porthoz]

According to the rules, the video ref needed conclusive evidence that it was a try. I guess he wasn't 100% sure he could overturn the decision. Unfortunate, but not the most shocking decision ever...