How to improve referees

[JoeD]

Following on from the referee whinge thread I thought I'd start this one as I have a few ideas (which will probably get panned) but here goes.

1. Pay them more money. Been saying it for years but pay peanuts and get monkeys. Ther should be 20 full time proffesional refs/touchies and they should be treated like a 17th NRL team with a wage budget of $4million. The top refs can get wht the top players get and so on. Then we may get some quality.

2. Refs/touchies to be interchangeable. There should be 4 officials of equal status but different roles. Which leads me to:

3. Specific roles for each offical that stays consistent throughout the game. eg
Ref A polices 10m offsides only and should be ruthless (ie no warnings)
Ref B polices the ruck (strips, holding down, markers offside, etc)
Ref C & D watch their perspective touchlines but can and should drift in close to the action so they can police forward passes, particularly from dummy half.

4. No more 'crackdowns' on particular rules. By that I mean all rules should be applied at all times.

5. BOD to defending team. Would clean up so much of the mess.

6. One coach/captain video review per game, can be used at any time up to 30 seconds after incident.

Feel free to add your own!

 

[Penrose Warrior]

Like 1). That would encourage more ex-players to get involved, which is exactly what is needed. Fast-track those with relevant playing experience.

Incidentally, I don't think there is necessarily such thing as crackdowns..just new issues that come up that are fresher in refs' minds .

 

[PaddyBoy]

More money, but not that much. They should all be decently well off full timers. Remember, Premier League refs get 600k max to do what they do, and there's a lot more money in the game.

Crackdowns need to happen, but they need to happen when things get out of control. At the moment things are allowed to get out of control and then they crack down. Last resort.

 

[1 Eyed TEZZA]

I heard that fulltime refs get $110K a year, but that there is only 5 fulltime refs. Double that amount first and see how it goes.

 

[Mr Fourex]

F*ck Hollywood Harrigan off.........

 

[2010Dragons]

Give everyone of one them one of these.... with the exception of when they referee in Canberra. :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

 

[Phil McGrawhan]

For the obvious things (Watmongs PTB) the video ref should over rule the 2 blind refs & order a penalty

 

[The Green Mushroom]

Replace the refs with a crowd vote. Every time the crowd calls for a penalty, its penalty. If the crowd doesn't call for a penalty its not a penalty.

Seriously though, here are my ideas, for better or worse:

• Make certain rules simpler to enforce. Either the man is tackled or he is not. If the ref thinks its a knock on, blow play dead. If he doesn't stop play or play advantage, then its not a knock on--play on.
• Make every other penalty enforced to the letter every single second of the game. If something earns a penalty in the rule book, someone should get a penalty, whether its in the first minute, the fifty-first minute or the eighty-first minute
• Make the refs rule on the field. If I didn't know any better I would assume that the signal for a try is the ref drawing a square in the air with his hands. (Or, why not just make the video ref the actual ref)
• Allow the captains one or two challenges since the refs are bound to make a few (dozen) mistakes if they can't use the TV all the time. I'd say allow them one or two incorrect challenges. Once they get them wrong, no more challenges.
• Allow the touchies to signal fouls, all fouls.

And now for the more extreme:

• Allow raking in the ruck and allow the ball to played in any direction. Now the only ruck penalty would be for kicking a ball before its let go or for being offside.
• The ball is alive until the tackle is complete, if its ends up in someone else's hands--play on. Now there are only penalties for illegal tackles and offside.
• Expand benefit of the doubt to every occasion--if its not clearly a foul, play on. I can see benefit of the doubt going to either side, but for simplicity I'd have to go with the defender if for nothing else than to prevent benefit of the doubt points.

 

[HowHigh]

Strap them with some sort of electrode and give everyone in the crowd a buzzer for it, maybe on their ticket

 

[meLOLulongtimeSouffs]

Strap them with some sort of electrode and give everyone in the crowd a buzzer for it, maybe on their ticket

lol skeepe would get RSI at a Raiders game

 

[bartman]

Controversial, but get rid of the two referees rule - it hasn't improved anything - and use the video ref more during play instead.

 

[jason taylor]

Controversial, but get rid of the two referees rule - it hasn't improved anything - and use the video ref more during play instead.

They tried using the video ref more. It slowed the game down too much.

 

[2010Dragons]

1. Get rid of the second referee and replace them with in goal referees.
2. The Video Referee is the only person to view replay in super slow motion but only once.
3. The fans at the game and viewers watching on TV don't see the super slow motion. All replays must be in real time.
4. If the decision is not made in 45 seconds, then benefit of the doubt goes to defending team.

 

[MightyBronco]

More money, more training, more technology (without slowing the play down).

They should have another ref in the box that just looks at the play the ball, with his own camera zoomed in on the ruck. And he should call those penalties like little knock ons, hands on the ball, forward passes and grapples. Then the other two refs can look at offsides and other stuff.

Also involve the touchies more.

 

[Stinkler]

Easy.
MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE!

 

[Pierced Soul]

allow refs to use commonsense instead of looking for kpi's etc (dunno if those were scrapped this year)

Stop Harrigan putting his own interpretations on what is a try. we were fine for a 100 years, if it looks liek a try it's a try, not this shit now where someone has half a finegrtip on a ball whilst it's falling out of their grasp but harrigan belieiving that technicaly the hole ball never actually separated therefore its a f**king try

remind referee's (i'm looking at you shayne hayne) that they're not the most important people on the field. we'r not there to watch them blow penalties or influence the outcome of the game

paying them more wont help, if they're shit, then paying them an extra $10k isnt going to make them better

 

[Stinkler]

remind referee's (i'm looking at you shayne hayne) that they're not the most important people on the field. we'r not there to watch them blow penalties or influence the outcome of the game

Archer and Cecchin are worse than Hayne in that aspect.
Archer thinks the world revolves around him.

 

[Mr Fourex]

Controversial, but get rid of the two referees rule - it hasn't improved anything - and use the video ref more during play instead.

Yes......get rid of the 2 refs. I agree it hasn't improved anything. IMO it's worse.

No.....not more vid replays/ref. Less.

Get back to old school. At least way back when, if a ref got a call wrong you could almost rationalise it by acknowledging he's only one man with one set of eyes, and gets a nano-second to look at it. Shit happens......

Now we have one merkin in the box watching countless replays .......2 refs in the centre and they are getting more things wrong than ever before. :crazy:

and whilst I hate grandstanding linesman......these turds should be more accountable as well. I swear half the time they are not even watching the game.

 

[Gmac]

-I think more ex players is a good thing. People that understand the game from a player’s perspective.

- 2 Referees are rubbish. If they are going to stick with it have one bloke marking the ten and the other policing the ruck and keep them the same all game. Its a joke when one referee allows more time for players to lie in the ruck and the other less. I have no issues with refs having slightly different interpretations of this ( How do you prevent it?) but at least keep it consistent during the game.

- Touchies are useless. What do they actually do? I dont understand how they can rule on some of the things when the positions they get in are terrible.

- I agree with the comments of making them accountable. If i f**k up at work and make a mistake that endangers people I get dragged in the Chiefs office and cop it big time. If I were to do it again Id be gone and very likely unemployable. This only works because there are a thousand other young guys waiting to take my place. What good does dropping a ref for a week then putting him straight back into first grade do? We need more high quality well trained referees. This means paying them better AND putting the systems in place in the junior ranks for development. All we talk about is junior player development. Why not referees too?

- Get rid of the dinosaurs and the egos. I used to referee Junior league, touch and oz tag etc ( Thought getting paid to run around instead of paying to go the gym wasnt such a bad thing) but some of the people involved in refereeing ( Only speaking for the Parra system here) are complete tossers. Half of them dont play anymore, they dont care about the game. They are just there for the power trip and ego stroking.

- One thing I will give the NRL / ARL some credit for is they have done well to get rid of the dick head parents from the game. But more needs to be done. Some of the things ive seen defy belief. No wonder kids don’t want to ref.

Until all of this and more is done nothing will change. Refs will ALWAYS make mistakes like players do. But it’s how they make them that matters. Missing a rake or drop ball in the tackle is always going to happen. A video ref looking at 100 replays and still coming up with the wrong decision is f**ked.

 

[Gmac]

Oh and this seperation thing is bullshit. It does my head in. ](*,)
For a hundred years you scored a try by grounding the ball cleanly and with control. Why the f**k did we need to change it. Wel be scoring touch downs NFL style before we know it :crazy:
f**k off Harrigan!!!