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Refereeing The Magic Round sin bin directive

yobbo84

Coach
Messages
11,311
Grant Atkins the last 4 weeks:

Rd 13 - Tigers v Panthers
21 penalties, 8 set restarts - 29 total

Rd 12 - Roosters v Raiders
20 penalties, 8 set restarts - 28 total

Rd 11 - Rabbitohs v Panthers
20 penalties, 6 set restarts - 26 total

Rd 10 - Tigers v Knights
17 penalties, 10 set restarts - 27 total

Over the past 4 weeks he has blown 110 infringements at an average of one every 2 minutes, 54 seconds.

This bloke needs reining in. He is overly harsh and inconsistent with the other referees, even during this crackdown.
Round 14 - Eels vs Tigers
13 penalties, 13 restarts - 26 total

And he had 4 incorrect calls successfully challenged.

Another game where his meddling leads the game to fall into the unwatchable territory.
 

skeepe

Immortal
Messages
48,310
Round 14 - Eels vs Tigers
13 penalties, 13 restarts - 26 total

And he had 4 incorrect calls successfully challenged.

Another game where his meddling leads the game to fall into the unwatchable territory.
And he seems to be getting higher profile games each week, so the hierarchy clearly like what they’re seeing.

If this is way the game wants to go, I think it’s time I got off the train.
 

Ron's_Mate

Bench
Messages
4,114
Round 14 - Eels vs Tigers
13 penalties, 13 restarts - 26 total

And he had 4 incorrect calls successfully challenged.

Another game where his meddling leads the game to fall into the unwatchable territory.
It was like watching Yawnion
 

Perth Red

Post Whore
Messages
69,549
Annoying thing is without the Vlandys "end of the world" spin it wouldnt have been that hard to get right.
Accidental with some onus on the attackers position - penalty no report
Careless with no contribution by attackers position - sin bin on report
Dangerous or deliberate with high impact and reckless defender behaviour - send off.

If they wanted to increase the severity they should have done so in the penalty loading and match suspensions, not compromised the integrity and entertainment of the games on the day.

I mean it isnt that fricking hard but Vlandys going all out in his death of the game rhetoric meant the refs had nowhere to go and now they are trying to reign it back we are all totally confused at the decisions.
 

blaza88z

Coach
Messages
15,186
Not normally a big Gus fan but he came out swinging last night on the Channel 9 footy show, whatever it's called..

Said that the idiots in the media need to stop with this directive that hits to the head are the leading cause of concussions, made point to the fact that all of Cordner's concussions were a result of where he got his head when making tackles. I hope Kent was watching, there is no bigger idiot in the media
 
Messages
12,484
The whole concussion conversation has been hijacked by Vlad and Kent and Co but Webster offers a good, measured argument without the hysteria displayed in the other rag.



The NRL must stop using players like Cordner to sell head-high crackdown​

Andrew Webster

Andrew Webster

She’s quite the fickle mistress, the grand old dame we know and love as rugby league. She keeps us guessing, continually changing and evolving, and we love her for it.

Yes, we love you, rugby league. We do.
Lately, however, we can read you like a book. Actually, the form guide.

On Monday morning, when Roosters captain Boyd Cordner announced his retirement because of a series of concussions, you just knew he was about to become the latest poster boy for the NRL’s head-high crackdown.

Phil Gould foreshadowed as much on 100% Footy on Channel Nine – the publisher of this masthead – on Monday night.
“I hope they don’t make him the poster boy,” Gould said. “He admits that it was his own tackling technique that caused the issues.”
Come on down, Graham Annesley, the head of football at the NRL!

“It is another example of high-profile players that over recent years have had to cut their careers short because of unnecessary contact with the head and neck,” Annesley told News Corp.
There’s drinking the Kool-Aid and then there’s diving into a big pool of the Kool-Aid and slowly doing backstroke.
Annesley’s remark is another example of the spin, spin, spin from the people who run the game to prove they’re right and everyone else is wrong. It’s another example of the NRL treating its players and fans like fools.
When I read Annesley’s quotes, I nearly fell off my chair. I was standing a foot from Cordner at his emotional, heartfelt media conference and he made it very clear that he supported what the NRL was doing but his head knocks were a result of his own “tackling technique”.
In other words, from tackling low, head colliding with the ball-carrier’s hip.
Even then, when Cordner was supporting them, his words were manipulated by the people who run the game just to prove a point.

How disgraceful of the NRL to use Cordner to suit its own nefarious needs; to fit snugly into its own bedtime story it keeps telling itself that it’s serious about concussion.
The way Annesley used up Cordner to stay on-message lines up with everything we’ve witnessed since the farcical scenes of Magic Round when the NRL spoke about the crackdown at a chief executive’s conference a few hours before its first match.
In the past month, former players who are suffering from dementia have been used as aforementioned poster boys so the NRL can take control of a narrative of which it never had a firm hold.

Tellingly, not one of those stories – not one! – has pointed out that some of these players haven’t played in 30 years or more, when head-high tackles were common and delivered with impunity; when there was no such thing as concussion protocols; when experts were barely aware of the damage caused by repeated head knocks.
Slightly important facts worth mentioning, don’t you think?

ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys essentially declared the war had been won in a bizarre interview with Ben Fordham on 2GB last Friday following Origin I.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/ha...ests-stance-is-softening-20210610-p57zrv.html
Referee Gerard Sutton clearly put the whistle away and the Bunker put its feet up and ordered pizza during NSW’s 50-6 win. How else to explain the reaction to the high shots of Kyle Feldt on Cameron Murray, and Moeaki Fotuaika on Latrell Mitchell, and then Cameron Munster’s sly kick into the guts of Liam Martin?
No complaints here. The game flowed. We weren’t talking about the match officials, for a change, just the champagne rugby league on display. Let the match review committee deal with it.
V’landys saw it differently, claiming the match proved that “thuggery to the head” had been eliminated and it was “bringing women back to watch the game”.

Ok then.
Then we watched another round of NRL lunacy in which Titans forward Kevin Proctor wasn’t sin-binned when he should have been; and Broncos forward Kobe Hetherington was sent off when he shouldn’t have been; then the hilarious sight of alleged Bulldogs hardman Jack Hetheringtontheatrically grabbing his head to milk a penalty for a stray hand from Dragons hooker Andrew McCullough.
“I had respect for you before that,” Dragons prop Blake Lawrie told Hetherington.
You could say the same thing about the current NRL administration, which feels more like a political party than a governing body. More concerned with winning the public relations battle instead of adopting a serious, holistic approach to head injuries.
Instead of using up former players to sell its message, instead of making them poster boys, why not talk to them?

Roosters co-captain Jake Friend retired in May but hasn’t received a call from head office. Has the NRL reached out to Tim Glasby, who retired last year because of concussion and is now working at the Storm?

These former players could offer some rare insight into the concussion issue; how they were caused, how they were treated, how the game can move forward.
I’d prefer their opinions than the numerous armchair neurologists out there who are prepared to speak on their behalf.
Cordner took a call from chief executive Andrew Abdo on the day he retired. Abdo confirmed to this column he wants to catch up with the retired Roosters captain in the future to make sure he stays involved in the game, although not specifically about concussion.
Abdo is smart enough, though, to realise the game needs to widen its horizons on this issue.

What he did tell me was that the NRL had established its medical advisory board, headed by Dr David Heslop, the highly regarded biosecurity expert on Project Apollo last year.

That will be welcomed by several clubs, which continually complain about not getting enough support from head office about how to handle concussions.

Thankfully, there’s acceptance from several people at the NRL that a serious, wide-ranging approach to concussions involving every stakeholder is needed – not the ad hoc approach we have now. Punishing head-high contact is merely part of the problem.
Instead of continually blabbering to their mates in the media, and using up past players to sell their message, why don’t the people running the game devise and outline a clear, all-inclusive strategy about how they’re protecting its players?

The players will buy into that. So will the fans. It’s a message we could all support.
 

Apey

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
28,261
Good article for the most part. "Armchair neurologists" is a bit of a laugh though.
 

bileduct

Coach
Messages
17,832
Ok, here's something I don't understand.

Why is there a different senior match official (bunker dude) for every game? One of the major problems we're seeing at the moment is consistency from game to game. Why wouldn't the bunker role be a full time job for one or two clowns instead of the rotating clown car that we've got at the moment?
 

Mr Spock!

Referee
Messages
22,502
Ok, here's something I don't understand.

Why is there a different senior match official (bunker dude) for every game? One of the major problems we're seeing at the moment is consistency from game to game. Why wouldn't the bunker role be a full time job for one or two clowns instead of the rotating clown car that we've got at the moment?
I thought they had a bunker HQ or something?
 

Mr Spock!

Referee
Messages
22,502
The whole concussion conversation has been hijacked by Vlad and Kent and Co but Webster offers a good, measured argument without the hysteria displayed in the other rag.



Instead of continually blabbering to their mates in the media, and using up past players to sell their message, why don’t the people running the game devise and outline a clear, all-inclusive strategy about how they’re protecting its players?

The players will buy into that. So will the fans. It’s a message we could all support.
They have. It applies to all other rugby league comps but not the NRL for some reason. Namely mandatory 2 weeks off for concussion and a medical clearance to play again.

NRL would rather go the easy route.
 

big hit!

Bench
Messages
3,452
1624071631969.png

Ridiculous. What the f**k is Taukeiaho supposed to do there?

Aidan Tolman's fall and Reece Robson clipping him is even worse.

f**king getting rid of tackling altogether if any incidental contact to the head is going to be penalised this way. At least there will be some sort of integrity in the final result.
 

bileduct

Coach
Messages
17,832
I thought they had a bunker HQ or something?
They do, everything has been centralised to Eveleigh.

There's no reason why the same officials shouldn't be across all games over the weekend. Right now they've got at least five different senior match officials making decisions in the bunker, and the consistency is all over the shop.
 

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