NRL refereeing has been a hot button topic throughout the first month and a half of the 2026
NRL season.
From six-agains, to captain's challenges and disruptors, it seems to be all anyone can talk about.
That is not exactly a good thing for the brass sitting at the NRL's Moore Park headquarters, but it's not exactly a new phenomenon either.
Refereeing issues have been a regular plague for the
NRL over the years, although the intensity of commentary around them has never been as serious and intense as it has been this go around.
And referee Adam Gee, alongside bunker official Chris Butler though may well have created a new issue for the game's governing body in Darwin on Friday evening during the Penrith Panthers' golden point win over the
Dolphins.
During the first half, to provide the quick summary,
Dolphins player
Kodi Nikorima was sin binned for a hip drop tackle on Penrith dummy half
Mitch Kenny.
Fair enough. Not out of the blue.
But the issue is, it wasn't going to be that way.
To start with, Nikorima was only put on report for a hip drop tackle that didn't actually seem all that bad to begin with. Sure, a penalty, maybe even reportable, and maybe some would suggest a sin bin.
Unfortunately, consistency around hip drop tackles is at the point where it seems clubs, players and coaches, let alone fans, don't really understand what constitutes which type of sanction.
But back to Nikorima.
He was going to stay on the field right up until the moment it emerged Kenny was heading off with what has now been revealed to be a fractured leg.
Then, referee Gee called Nikorima back over and advised the Dolphins' five-eighth to follow the Penrith hooker to the dressing rooms for ten minutes.
It's the first time in memory something like that has happened, and creates an exceptionally dangerous precedent.
While the
NRL, much to the dismay of many, have all but confirmed this year that injury outcomes are now more important than the actual offence in on-field sanctions, MRC charge sheets and judiciary hearings, what happened on Friday is now something that can be 'gamed' by coaches.
That's not saying they will, but
NRL coaches have been smart enough to find every loophole in the rules in recent decades, and now there is an obvious one.
Let's, hypothetically of course, say a player is due to come off the park in the near future of a game for a scheduled rest, and he winds up in a dodgy looking high shot or hip drop style tackle.
He stays down because, in this day and age where everything is reviewed, why wouldn't you?
The replay then shows, clearly, that the opposition player has committed an offence which is on the borderline of tougher sanctions than just a penalty.
What's to stop the player and his club trainer from signalling he needs to come off?
Because the NRL's precedent, based on what happened in Darwin, is that the offending player will now follow him to the dressing rooms.
The 'victim' player meanwhile, heads to the dressing room, and then magically appears on the bench 20 minutes later ready to go again.
There is now absolutely nothing stopping that from becoming common place in the game moving forward.
The precedent to hand out tougher sanctions for injuries - just look at Ryan Couchman's hip drop tackle, or Luke Laulilii's aerial challenge on
Bailey Simonsson last week - is already there, but the fact a system has now been created whereby coaches could game it to their advantage isn't good enough.
The fact of the matter is injury outcomes shouldn't come into the penalty for a player.
This is a contact sport, and things go wrong, but things also don't go wrong. The exact same dangerous tackle could well end one player's season and not register for another.
You see it 50 times a game. Low range high shots, swinging hip drop tackles that don't cause injuries, crusher-like offences.
The fact so many don't get penalised immediately has already led to the 'staying down' epidemic that grips nearly every game played, but now, staying down will have a new purpose, and the
NRL will have to follow their precedent.
Just maybe, there is too much reliance on technology, although, even that would be a hard case to answer after the early game saw a blatant high shot from the Raiders in the dying moments ignored.
It's hard to say what the fix is for the
NRL, but it sure isn't making what happened in Darwin commonplace.
NRL refereeing has been a hot button topic throughout the first month and a half of the 2026 NRL season. From six-agains, to captain's challenges and disruptors, it seems to be all anyone can talk about.
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