Because a penalty could be 2 points. A team potentially wins a game on that ridiculous interpretation.
I've seen some arguments about this call but the call was correct. The rule is that you can strip an attacking player attempting to ground the ball for a try, or in the act of scoring a try. Best was 1m off the ground being held by 3 Rooster players at the time he was stripped. Of course he was
trying to free himself to score a try, but he wasn't in the act of scoring it:
I thought the referee and Graham Annesley explained it correctly and I don't say that often. Annesley normally just agrees with the refs no matter what but he showed an identical instance from the Manly Parra game and said that should have been penalised too. Roughly 6mins in it starts:
NRL head of football elite competitions Graham Annesley holds his weekly football briefing relating to round 16 of the 2023 Telstra Premiership.
www.nrl.com
I would expect my team to get penalised in the same situation.