Brian Smith: Stop time-wasting - the referee saga is getting us nowhere

[Frederick]

Brian Smith: Stop time-wasting - the referee saga is getting us nowhere
BY BRIAN SMITH
24/07/2008 9:43:00 PM

RUGBY league must be one of the toughest sports of all to referee.

If you think about the number of rules that can be breached, the number of players on the field and the pace of the game, there can be no argument whatsoever that the man with the whistle has a bloody tough job.

I know this for a fact, having spent every Saturday afternoon in my teenage years refereeing junior games in Casino, my home town.

In any single game of footy, there are hundreds of tackles. And virtually each and every time a tackle is completed, there is a potential penalty waiting to be blown.

Was the tackled player held down too long?

Did he play the ball correctly?

Were both the markers square?

Were all 13 of the defenders back 10 metres or however far the referee insisted they retreat?

Was there any suggestion of an illegal hold, such as a grapple tackle? Did the defenders make any high contact with the head or neck, or did the man with the ball illegally raise his elbow as a fend?

The list goes on and on.

Even with all the technology we have available via the video referee, it is impossible for the officials to get 100 per cent of the decisions right 100 per cent of the time.

As an experiment, when you are watching tonight's TV games, concentrate hard on every ruck, especially on the defensive players as they peel off their tackled opponent.

Eventually a penalty will be awarded. But was it really that much different to any of the rucks which preceded it?

Over the past few weeks, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the referees and the role they play in our game.

It has been well documented that the Knights have been on the receiving end of some horrendous penalty counts this season.

It is very disappointing, and a bit embarrassing, to realise that we are the most penalised team in the competition.

It is absolutely bewildering to know that we have received the fewest penalties in our favour.

The stats would suggest we are an undisciplined team. But are we really that much worse than any of our rivals?

I'm the first to admit that sometimes this season we have been our own worst enemies. There were four or five penalties in our loss last week to Cronulla that were simply unprofessional.

But the penalty count was 11-6 against us, so there were a number of penalties that I believe fell into the "subjective" category.

Now I am not casting any aspersions on the integrity of our referees, because I know they are doing the best job they can.

And I'm not the type to bother wasting my time on conspiracy theories.

But I have a couple of hunches about why we keep falling out with the NRL's law enforcers.

The first reason is what I call the underdog factor.

The media, fans and bookmakers usually expect the favourites to win. They doubt whether the teams lower on the ladder, or teams riddled with injuries, are good enough.

I wonder whether this has some sort of subconscious effect on our referees. Certainly they come under a lot more scrutiny if a high-flying team are beaten in a boilover, and the losing coach then proceeds to criticise the ref at the post-match media conference.

Life is sometimes a lot simpler if everything proceeds as expected.

Unfortunately, more often than not this season, we have been underdogs.

The other major factor I have identified is that the flow of penalties tapers off in the final quarter of a game.

That is a statistical fact, right across the NRL.

Given that teams are more fatigued in the latter stages of a match, it is hard to believe that somehow their discipline has improved.

Instead this trend suggests that referees, for whatever reason, become more lenient the longer a game goes on.

This counts against us, big time.

In most of our games this year, we have been coming home strong in the final 20 minutes.

Statistically the Knights are one of the leading teams in terms of tries scored in the last quarter of games.

We have staged a number of comeback victories this season and pride ourselves on our overall fitness.

But it is very hard to keep fighting back if the opposition are trying to slow the game down and the referee is not as vigilant as he may have been in the early exchanges.

Anyway, we have wasted enough time and energy debating the referees this week.

The best thing we can do is move forward before we become bitter and twisted.

In many ways, I see the Knights as being like a young challenger taking on a heavyweight boxing champion.

We have to accept that it will be hard to get the judges' decision and win on points. But nobody can argue if we land a knockout punch.

LINK

 

[Burwood]

And I'm not the type to bother wasting my time on conspiracy theories.

Ok, good. I have never believed in the conspiracy theories about the Raiders etc being victimised, and I'm not about to start believing in them now just because it involves the Knights.

But I have a couple of hunches about why we keep falling out with the NRL's law enforcers.

The first reason is what I call the underdog factor.

The media, fans and bookmakers usually expect the favourites to win. They doubt whether the teams lower on the ladder, or teams riddled with injuries, are good enough.

I wonder whether this has some sort of subconscious effect on our referees. Certainly they come under a lot more scrutiny if a high-flying team are beaten in a boilover, and the losing coach then proceeds to criticise the ref at the post-match media conference.

Life is sometimes a lot simpler if everything proceeds as expected.

Unfortunately, more often than not this season, we have been underdogs.

The other major factor I have identified is that the flow of penalties tapers off in the final quarter of a game.

That is a statistical fact, right across the NRL.

Given that teams are more fatigued in the latter stages of a match, it is hard to believe that somehow their discipline has improved.

Instead this trend suggests that referees, for whatever reason, become more lenient the longer a game goes on.

This counts against us, big time.

In most of our games this year, we have been coming home strong in the final 20 minutes.

Statistically the Knights are one of the leading teams in terms of tries scored in the last quarter of games.

We have staged a number of comeback victories this season and pride ourselves on our overall fitness.

But it is very hard to keep fighting back if the opposition are trying to slow the game down and the referee is not as vigilant as he may have been in the early exchanges.

Anyway, we have wasted enough time and energy debating the referees this week.

The best thing we can do is move forward before we become bitter and twisted.

In many ways, I see the Knights as being like a young challenger taking on a heavyweight boxing champion.

We have to accept that it will be hard to get the judges' decision and win on points. But nobody can argue if we land a knockout punch.

"Hunches"? Sound a lot like conspiracy theories to me...

 

[K-Man]

I think he makes some extremely good points.

You can't deny that statistics about our last 20 minutes, and the decreasing penalty count, back up what he's suggesting.

Basically, entire debates over in other threads about the quality of our team etc etc might be completely meaningless if we had received a decent number of penalties and not given away so many line-ball decisions - in my opinion it is the single biggest reason why we are not sitting about 6th on the ladder.

The percentage of tries scored from penalties these days is through the roof. You have to be winning the penalty count to have a fair chance. I think we have done well to overcome this problem and be so competitive in every match.

 

[COB]

Footnote to this article - Souths and Eels ( next 2 knights games ) are 2 of the LEAST penalised teams in the NRL.

 

[Knightmare]

A diplomatic article by Smith. He does make some valid points in it though. Regarding his favorites theory, surely Newcastle would have to be favorites against Souths and Parramatta?

 

[Yosh]

I totally agree with him. If we play good good footy there is no reason we cant win, blaming refs are just excuse hunting for poor form

 

[Hanscholo]

Im sure he wants to make sure we dont get a victim complex and use that as an excuse to lose games. Deep down however he is pissed off at the current situation.

It has nothng to do with being an underdog or away from home. When a referee is sat down on a tuesday morning and given a brief for the week that highlights team tactics to watch out for, individuals that have problems in certain areas it isnt surprising to me that you get this sort of very biased refereeing taking place.

Referees are assessed on certain criteria by Finch every week. He holds their future in his hands. Now what kind of mental approach do you think a referee is going to take if he has been told Newcastle slow down the play the ball and stand off side, watch out for it. I dont buy it that Finch has an axe to gring agains us. What i do subscribe to is that he tried very much to apply his football coaching methodologies to the referees and the result of that has been a review system that highlights perceived weaknesses. I say perceived because lets face it, get 20 people into a room, show them something then ask them what they saw and you will get wildly different results. It is subjective and based on perception, in this case Robert Finch's peception.

So my point here is that when the referee gets reviewed he wants to show his boss, there you go, see i was looking out for that.

Because league is such a frantic game its impossible for the refs to capture everything. This means that they need to concentrate on certain things during a game, important things. Now if they are being told to watch someone closely then it stands to reason that they will see that person infringe more than others. Players and sides being singled out for things is nothing new, but Finch has institutionalised to the point where its his judgement on your style that allows or disallows success in this game.

So rather than perhaps having a problem with a single referee like clubs have had in the past, we are now facing an issue against all of them because the perception is from the desk of Finch that we are seriously trying to cheat in games to win.

I think earlier this year a few of us noted that our ruck control was vastly improved, we were slowing things down a lot and at times pushing the envelope. The problem there is that someone with a football brain like Finch saw that, and we have been putting up with the results ever since when in reality we have vastly improved our ruck clearance.

So we have an undisciplined tag, like Penrith did last year, like Souths had the year before. The way to get around this is not coaching referees to be biased, instead coaching them to have certain baseline criteria that they hold to for everyone and enforce it equally.

Lastly this just isnt a Newcastle problem, games 2 and 3 of teh SOO series were a great example of how the system changes the way referees approach games. Its a biased system by default, not matter how well meaning it is. We need to get back to consistency as being the marker for a referee to aspire to.