Doctor
Bench
- Messages
- 3,612
I'll start with this:
I'll second the notion that we would have lost anyway -- but the referee was particularly ordinary last night.
If we put aside the ridiculous amount of penalties for alleged "flops" and "ruck slowing", the major crux of my argument is to do with video referees giving the on-field referees tips on what actually happened.
We saw last night a player (Witt perhaps?) attempt to ground the ball to score, only to drop the ball before it rolled out of the in-goal area -- the referee initially ruled that it was stripped by a Cowboy. They headed for a drop-out before he then reversed his decision, apparently because of a call from the video referee, Mick Stone, who told the referee the real story.
Fair enough -- I have no problems with this provided the correct call is made.
The problem is: it is inconsistently used. A good while after the decision mentioned above, you may have noticed a little kick put through that Craig Hall ended up getting another kick on. The Cowboys' player, in a soccer-style legs-first diving tackle, managed to knock the ball into touch. It was ruled, by the on-field referee, to have come off the Knights' player and "not played at" by the Cowboys -- this, as replays confirmed, was an incorrect decision. Yet the video referee did not intervene, despite having at his disposal both the time and the capability. Perhaps not. Perhaps the video referee cannot overrule such a decision -- but:
- Why can he overrule/change a decision about who the ball came off in the in-goal (without being officially referred to for a Try/No Try verdict), but NOT overrule/change a similar incident in the normal field of play.
If the NRL want to be serious about consistency, they ought to look at why a video referee is giving helpful advice on only some occassions.
They should either have the ability to give their informed advice on all occasions or on no occasions at all. Either one or the other -- otherwise it strikes me as highly damaging to the game.
antonius said:I'm not looking for excuses here but look we were on the end of a hiding from the ref, who was bloody pathetic, I think it was the last try that went to refs call and he had no hesitation in awarding a very dubious try, the Rauhi strip went their way, when it would be debatable weather it was a two man strip job, that type of decission according to todays paper is at the refs discretion, 11-2 penalty count a lot of which were crowd penalties the Cowboys were as bad as us in the play the ball area, the ref last night was the perfect example of a home town ref, that isn't why we lost though and as I said I'm not making excuses just trying to see why the boys just seemed to give up
I'll second the notion that we would have lost anyway -- but the referee was particularly ordinary last night.
If we put aside the ridiculous amount of penalties for alleged "flops" and "ruck slowing", the major crux of my argument is to do with video referees giving the on-field referees tips on what actually happened.
We saw last night a player (Witt perhaps?) attempt to ground the ball to score, only to drop the ball before it rolled out of the in-goal area -- the referee initially ruled that it was stripped by a Cowboy. They headed for a drop-out before he then reversed his decision, apparently because of a call from the video referee, Mick Stone, who told the referee the real story.
Fair enough -- I have no problems with this provided the correct call is made.
The problem is: it is inconsistently used. A good while after the decision mentioned above, you may have noticed a little kick put through that Craig Hall ended up getting another kick on. The Cowboys' player, in a soccer-style legs-first diving tackle, managed to knock the ball into touch. It was ruled, by the on-field referee, to have come off the Knights' player and "not played at" by the Cowboys -- this, as replays confirmed, was an incorrect decision. Yet the video referee did not intervene, despite having at his disposal both the time and the capability. Perhaps not. Perhaps the video referee cannot overrule such a decision -- but:
- Why can he overrule/change a decision about who the ball came off in the in-goal (without being officially referred to for a Try/No Try verdict), but NOT overrule/change a similar incident in the normal field of play.
If the NRL want to be serious about consistency, they ought to look at why a video referee is giving helpful advice on only some occassions.
They should either have the ability to give their informed advice on all occasions or on no occasions at all. Either one or the other -- otherwise it strikes me as highly damaging to the game.