Danish
Referee
- Messages
- 32,019
In those 10 years, we've had 5 coaches, and probably 100 players come and go at the club. I struggle to see how we could have such a consistent amount of penalties awarded against us while receiving consistently so few and have it be the fault of our tactics.
As I mentioned in another thread, its not a conspiracy, it is just absolute proof of terrible coaching in the refereeing ranks. Tip sheets, video sessions, learning every player's name and nickname so they can target them instead of simply calling their number, and all sorts of other ridiculous practices brought in by Finch, maintained by Harrigan, and now continued on be Archer lead refs to go into games with preconceived ideas about what particular players give to watch out for and what particular teams to keep on top of instead of simply calling what they see.
These preconceived notions, once in place, then become self-fulfilling prophecies i.e. X team/player has a rep for giving away penalties, so X team/player gets refereed more strictly, leading to X team/player giving away more penalties. This then works in reverse for teams and players which refs have decided are cleanskins (think about why guys like Hindmarsh and Fitzgibbon used to get away with murder in the ruck and at the judiciary while the likes of Morley or Matai only had to breathe on someone too long to get pinged).
People will ignore this though just to follow some ridiculous shoe horned "roosters give away penalties on purpose" bullshit which, despite apparently being such an apparently obvious and advantageous tactic, has never been copied by another side and was only identified late in the 2013 season by cranky old Wayne Bennett after Maloney had the gaul to give away a shocking 1 penalty in a row for holding down after a dubious turnover close to our line.
As I mentioned in another thread, its not a conspiracy, it is just absolute proof of terrible coaching in the refereeing ranks. Tip sheets, video sessions, learning every player's name and nickname so they can target them instead of simply calling their number, and all sorts of other ridiculous practices brought in by Finch, maintained by Harrigan, and now continued on be Archer lead refs to go into games with preconceived ideas about what particular players give to watch out for and what particular teams to keep on top of instead of simply calling what they see.
These preconceived notions, once in place, then become self-fulfilling prophecies i.e. X team/player has a rep for giving away penalties, so X team/player gets refereed more strictly, leading to X team/player giving away more penalties. This then works in reverse for teams and players which refs have decided are cleanskins (think about why guys like Hindmarsh and Fitzgibbon used to get away with murder in the ruck and at the judiciary while the likes of Morley or Matai only had to breathe on someone too long to get pinged).
People will ignore this though just to follow some ridiculous shoe horned "roosters give away penalties on purpose" bullshit which, despite apparently being such an apparently obvious and advantageous tactic, has never been copied by another side and was only identified late in the 2013 season by cranky old Wayne Bennett after Maloney had the gaul to give away a shocking 1 penalty in a row for holding down after a dubious turnover close to our line.