This is gonna be a long one so feel free to skip if you don't have a few mins
You know what. I am actually so tired of the referee complaining in the game. It is literally 10 times worse than any actual referee issues we face.
There is a culture seeping into our game of fans and coaches deflecting accountability and blaming referees for WAY more things than they actually need to be blamed for.
I think people fail to consider that a lot of NRL rules rely on subjectivity regarding an event that just happened. A referee is not a robot, they must make a snap decision with players running up, screaming in their face, commentators salivating and ready to criticise, not to mention fans on social media ready to rip in. Yes they make mistakes, just like players do. There is NO way to remove this aspect from the game completely.
What harms the game is the lack of respect for referees that has crept in this last decade. Go to any post game NRL Facebook post and I guarantee the top reply will be talking about referees. It's f**king tiring. When they make real mistakes, they get dropped, just like players. But the way people act about contentious calls that need to be made on the spot, goddamn. It's part of league.
Just have a look at that Manly vs Panthers try, where the bunker ruled it wasn't touched. Manly lost their mind, armchair referees at home said it was wrong, and wow, upon review post match it was ruled correct!
People need to accept that human error will always be a part of refereeing a sport with rules like league. There are a few ways we can improve some of the ref errors that ARE prevalent, along with eliminating this anti referee culture taking hold:
1 - Referees must be shown more respect by players. Go and have a look at a union game and how players interact with referees. It's formal, slower, respectful and certainly has no dickheads screaming in his face from every angle before he can even make a decision. Seeing Gallen and Fifita scream in the face of the ref on the weekend was a disgrace.
2 - Introduce a 5 minute bin for multiple breaches of the above as well as conceding multiple penalties. And actually enforce it. Keep 10 minute bins for dangerous tackles and punches.
3 - Change the rules from forcing the referee from ruling try or no try before sending to bunker. This is a VERY big part of what causes the errors people whinge about. They MUST guess, and then the bunkers hands are tied by arbitrary rules from that point on.
4 - Police dodgy play the balls more closely. Now this is an area referees do need to improve, but not as much as the following:
5 - Allow referees to enforce the 10m offside rule. As everyone knows, barely any team in the league goes back the full 10. If refs pulled everyone up on it they would be blamed for blowing too many penalties (another culture issue affecting their mentality) but if it gets that bad then they need to use the aforementioned 5 minute bin. I believe this is the most important change because cheating this rule has become fundamental to NRL the last few years.
Above all people need to just suck their losses the f**k up and stop the referee abuse. It's really gone too far and is damaging the game. Todd Greenberg was 100% right yesterday when he told people to grow up. And he's almost never right!
I'm not even gonna get started on some of the shit I see that specific teams are targeted and the NRL is rigged. f**k off with that shit
I wrote so much holy shit sorry everyone