Watched Annessley’s presser yesterday. His previous experience as a politician, not former referee, played out very well.
To save face he calls the challenge acceptable under the rules, but the decision by the video ref wrong.
What he has done now is open up a Pandora’s box. It now means that at the last tackle of each game is a stop in play that allows the captain to make a challenge request, assuming they still have one. Where we we have games with 6 points between teams, we will now have challenges for the sake of challenges.
Scenario 1
Team with ball and 6 or less points behind will challenge that on the final tackle, the defending team were offside. As long as they give a reason the bunker must look at everything. Bunker identifies marker not square and not the offside (reason for challenge) as happened to dragons on Friday night with Garrick in touch challenge. Result penalty.
Scenario 2
Team behind get a penalty to level/win game, same as Cowboys on Sunday. Holmes misses goal. Hence break in play. Ref hasn’t blown full time and Cows challenge. Challenge reason being the tigers players weren’t still during the kick, hence putting Holmes off. Under the letter of the law challenge should be upheld and Holmes gets another kick.
Scenario 3
Golden point. Team misses field goal. Break in play. Challenge players offside. We know refs put the whistle away during golden point. Bunker must rule penalty.
Scenario 4
Golden point. Team gets field goal. Losing team challenges as ref hasn’t blown full time yet. Challenge players impeded into getting to the kicker.
I’m sure there are more scenarios but the NRL have now painted themselves in a corner. What a f**king joke.
We can no longer celebrate tries in real time because the bunker has to sign off on them and now we don’t know the result at full time until the bunker reviews.
FFS give me my game back. Mr Vlandys get off your arse and intervene now before it’s too late.