McCallum and Mascord on NRL refereeing standards

[adamkungl]

There are systematic failures in the refereeing ranks starting with Archer and by extension Greenberg.

The on-field referees have no confidence in their own decision making. Human error will always be an element of refereeing, but what we're seeing is interpretations changed and damaging trends designed to avoid media scrutiny.

The constant refusals to send players off is a clear directive from above. Don't send off because we don't want to disadvantage a team and face the post-game backlash. And now look how that's turned out. We have Archer throwing his underlings under the bus publicly within hours of the game. He does this weekly.

The rules should be clear.
Illegal tackle resulting in serious injury should be a send off.
Violence not in the spirit of the game should be a send off.
Professional fouls/aka cheating, should be a sin bin. This should include repeated goal line infringements.

And the report system should be put out to pasture. Has been utterly meaningless for close to 2 decades.

 

[Captain Apollo]

I just want to see them play the ball with their bloody foot.

The best games I have seen were the Second Tests from 1985 and 1990 between Australia and NZ and Gt Britain and both were refereed by a Frenchman!!!

Harrigan was an ego on legs he made mistakes also....ignoring rules being the biggest.

Mistakes? I knew people who were involved in coaching NRL referees when Harrigan was still officiating. I was told that Harrigan often disagreed with his coaches over rulings, never admitted evenly privately he was wrong on any decision he made, and he often refereed to how he felt the game should be refereed as opposed to what the rule book said.

 

[Captain Apollo]

Does anyone know what refs get paid?

Are they on Daly Evans money?

Why is it ok for him to make 4 errors in a game, but the ref must be perfect?

You would all make great wives.

They most certainly are not paid DCE money. I believe it is around the $100k-$150k mark they get paid for the season.

 

[Mr Angry]

So reserve grader $$$$, but we expect SoO performance in every game.

All I am saying they make mistakes.

Players decide games, even if a ref gives a penalty in 79th minute for a drawn match to won by 2 points, what about the first 79 minutes, good teams win, shit teams lose. Refs make mistakes.

 

[Life's Good]

So reserve grader $$$$, but we expect SoO performance in every game.

All I am saying they make mistakes.

Players decide games, even if a ref gives a penalty in 79th minute for a drawn match to won by 2 points, what about the first 79 minutes, good teams win, shit teams lose. Refs make mistakes.

They are full time professionals who train extensively for their job. There is assistance from the 2nd ref, touch judges & bunker and still f*ck things up. Some mistakes are excusable given the speed of the game whilst others are not. All the fans are asking for is they are held accountable as with most employees regardless of what they earn.
No one is asking for the refs to be flogged in public(except Sticky Ricky, maybe).

 

[OldPanther]

Does anyone know what refs get paid?

Are they on Daly Evans money?

Why is it ok for him to make 4 errors in a game, but the ref must be perfect?

You would all make great wives.

It's not the mistakes that bother people. It's the clear inconsistencies that effect teams people are highly emotionally attached to.

 

[OldPanther]

They are full time professionals who train extensively for their job. There is assistance from the 2nd ref, touch judges & bunker and still f*ck things up. Some mistakes are excusable given the speed of the game whilst others are not. All the fans are asking for is they are held accountable as with most employees regardless of what they earn.
No one is asking for the refs to be flogged in public(except Sticky Ricky, maybe).

You just know he'd want the whip.

 

[Life's Good]

You just know he'd want the whip.

Or go easy on them and make them read 47 texers.

 

[Frank_Grimes]

Yep it is just fine for a player to spill the ball, miss a tackle, kick it out on the full, give away a stupid penalty....mistakes happen.
But referees must be perfect at all times or the sky falls in.
I am amazed we have refs, thankless job and given crap at every opportunity.
Yeah the refs are why the top 4 and bottom 4 are where they...not the player, not the coach, it is those evil refs...
f**king joke this subject.

Thankless.....apart from the up to $100,000 salary they collect to work weekends. But other than that....thankless.

 

[adamkungl]

Individual referees making mistakes are not the problem here, though the amount of help they get and still cock up is amazing at times.

If you expect them to either make no mistakes or be publicly accountable you're barking up the wrong tree. For Sticky to even jokingly suggest a refs press conference was next level geniused. Especially in a game where his team benefited from a clear send off being missed.

The problem is a systematic issue caused by poor ref coaching, band-aid rule changes influenced by mediocre refs bosses and selfish coaches, and flimsy interpretations that change year on year, and sometimes mid season. In fact the entire concept of 'rule interpretations'.

Rugby League needs an independent (not conducted by current refs, coaches, or administrators) review of the rule book. Certain areas needs to be targetted - the dismissal system, the ruck, the rake, the obstruction and the shoulder charge stand out to me as particularly flimsy and prone to interpretation or total guesswork.
Upon developing a stronger rule book the NRL needs to find a referees boss that gives his charges the direction and confidence to actually enforce it.

 

[Phil McGrawhan]

Go out & ref the game
It's so simple
If a players offside ..penalise him...don't give him a friendly "you're off dave"
Those rules are learnt in under7
So why do grown men need to be told to stay onside .
They wil soon learn to get onside or get hooked by the coach .

Just apply the rules

 

[adamkungl]

Regarding human error.

The closer you get to perfection, the higher the cost is to achieve it.
To use a non-RL analogy:
a sloppy 200kg rig bloke can lose 50 or so kg with fairly minor exercise and diet change. The next 30 will require more dedication, the next 15 even more so.
A 70kg bloke requires absolute dedication and sacrifice to even lose 3kg.

I think this applies to referees. There will ALWAYS be some percentage of errors. The costs to reduce that past a certain point grow exponentially larger.
We have touch judges to advise on things the ref is likely to miss. Nice improvement.
We have a video ref to do the same - further improvement but not as much, slightly controversial.
We add a 2nd ref to do the same but with more influence - debatable improvement, very controversial.
We spend $20million upgrading the video referee technology - fractional improvement, very costly.

I argue that the last 2 are high cost, minimal gain exercises in futility. We have to accept that no amount of improvement will raise decision accuracy above a certain point.

 

[adamkungl]

Go out & ref the game
It's so simple
If a players offside ..penalise him...don't give him a friendly "you're off dave"
Those rules are learnt in under7
So why do grown men need to be told to stay onside .
They wil soon learn to get onside or get hooked by the coach .

Just apply the rules

"if i have to give away another penalty im gonna have to start thinking about giving you warning about the possibility of further action"

 

[Slackboy72]

Where's skeepe?

 

[OldPanther]

"if i have to give away another penalty im gonna have to start thinking about giving you warning about the possibility of further action"

This happens regularly and shows their biggest issue. They lack authority or at least act as though they do.

It should be:

Ref: "one more and someone is going"

Captain: "Yes sir"

Penalty in the next set

Ref: "Number 12 and captain come here"

Captain: "sir"

Ref: "I warned you and now he can sit down"

Ref signals 10 in the bin captain complains and the ref tells him to talk to his team about discipline and gets back to it.

 

[LineBall]

The problem isn't the rules, its the severity (and to some degree variability) of the punishment. Penalties are game deciding and often completely out of whack for the severity of the crime. 40+ meters and 6 more tackles for a minor ruck infringement?

This is the reason refs are scared to enforce the rules. So you get inconsistency. You get refs more likely to blow a penalty early in the count or if the ball is in one corner of the field. You get rules completely ignored for seasons at a time only to be applied at random. You get crackdowns on X that last for about a fortnight. Players and coaches aren't stupid, they exploit this inconsistency and the problem compounds with games that are objectively harder to officiate.

We want consistency but that's not possible when the penalty is the only option refs have to enforce the rules of the game as they currently stand.

I agree in part. Perhaps changing the rule so that you can either kick for touch and continue the penalty count or quick tap and get another set of 6.

However, the harsher the penalty, the less likely to offend. If walking off the mark, or not playing the ball with your foot could lead to the other team getting a kick at goal, I'd assume you would be paying more attention to what you're doing.

 

[Lambretta]

Firstly, let the referee referee the game
Why are there two of them? Giving different interpretations and confusing things. Dumb

Watch the game in England. They sin bin players for repeated infringements. They send players off for dirty play. They have the respect of the players and referee the game

OK, so the players there don't play the ball with their foot, but they never have, so it's probably not in their rules. But the referees over there seem to control the games far better than ours and with far less influence on the outcome.

 

[Captain Apollo]

I actively refereed in junior rugby league for 4 years. In terms of telling players they were "offside" and things of that nature, they've been going on for more than 30 years at all levels of rugby league refereeing (if not longer). The thing is until Sports Ears came along, the average fan didn't realise it was happening at first grade level. One of our coaches (who's now into his late 60s) said at the time the trick was not to "coach" them per se (e.g. "don't touch him, number 10") but to point out when they were infringing (e.g. "Your offside number 10") and if they committed the infringement (i.e. being offside in defence after being told they were offside they still tackled the ball carrier) then you would penalise them.

The problem is too many people who have vested interests have their fingers in the pie which has made it difficult for referees at the elite level in my opinion. For example, I hear "all we want is consistency" in relation to the rules. The thing is the rules, especially in relation to playing the advantage, are the most subjective ever written. It all comes down to the opinion of the individual referee on the whole, but coaches all want everything black and white.

Then add in the media. Go back to the 1980s and 1990s. Whenever a player was sent off you would hear this common refrain "it robbed the game of a contest". I mean really, it's the Referee's job to ensure a contest?! This became so common place it effected the administration of the game into an unwritten "ensure a contest" pressure which has resulted in less dismissals, more putting of players on report, and a general decline in rule enforcement. I only have to look at a few comments here about how big a game changer a penalty now is sentiment present in this thread as an example.

Mistakes happen. Yes, and you work to minimise them. The problem is too many focus on these errors time after time, be they coaches (e.g. Ricky Stuart) or in the media (e.g. Rothfield) which never helps but just perpetuates the problem.

Do I know the "cure". Nope. However I doubt either Ricky Stuart or Phil Rothfield would.

 

[age.s]

However, the harsher the penalty, the less likely to offend. If walking off the mark, or not playing the ball with your foot could lead to the other team getting a kick at goal, I'd assume you would be paying more attention to what you're doing.

This all sounds great in theory, but in practice I think we can see that it doesn't work like this. Minor infringements just get ignored or penalised sporadically. As such there is incentive for players/coaches to bend the rules just far enough without getting caught and hope you're not the 1 in 100 they decide to call out. I think the factor for changing behaviour is the consistency with which the punishment is applied, not the severity of the punishment, though there's obviously a break point for that.

I'm not sure what a good answer would be. Not restarting the count or not allowing a kick for touch might work, but it still means different benefits/punishments depending on the game situation which might encourage offending. I like the idea of having either (but not both) as an option. Having two types of penalties, with minor infringements incurring an additional tackle added to the set (blatant penalties would still incur kick+set restart) was one idea I had but it might be too convoluted in practice. I think any of these would be an improvement on what we have now though.

 

[STORM.99/07]

You just know if it happens Cecchin is the one most likely to act.

most likely ashly klown