The way NRL referee’s boss Graham Annesley fronts the media and public to work through the big issues surrounding the competition’s officiating is admirable. It can only be healthy for a sport to see the benefit of educating its fans and embracing debate. A certain other code would benefit greatly from entertaining a more regular forum for this kind of discussion.
That said, this week, Annesley had a couple of spicy meatballs to deal with and was able to provide plenty of talk about what something isn’t — but very little advice on what something is.
We’ll start with the lesser of the two big talking points this week: the decision not to award a penalty try to the Warriors in their loss to the Knights on a sodden afternoon in Newcastle. To briefly recap: Dallin Watene-Zelezniak was tackled mid-air in the process of attempting to score a try after fielding a Shaun Johnson kick. Watene-Zelezniak failed to ground the ball.
The tackler, Greg Marzhew, was penalised for the play on review by The Bunker, but no penalty try was awarded. On-field referee Chris Butler did not bring up the penalty try option and reportedly told Johnson after the incident that "we never give penalty tries for that".
In defending the decision, Annesley said: “It’s not an automatic penalty try — there’s no such thing." The Bunker officials had to "determine whether the try would have been scored, not could have been scored, were it not for the interference".
"The rules make it very clear."
Well, sorry, they don’t.
Yes, there is a difference between "would" and "could", specifically in their meanings as conditional verbs. Which is exactly why the rule uses "would", instead of "could". Despite that, maybe the act needs to go before the outcome. Instead of working backwards from Watene-Zelezniak dropping the ball, work forward from the moment Marzhew makes the tackle. Could Watene-Zelezniak have scored that try without the interference? If anyone could, he could. Things would have been different if that tackle wasn’t made in the first place. So could we take the tackle out of the picture? And would that give us a clearer idea? Should we even bother?
I would have loved to hear Annesley tell us what would have made that a penalty try. Not what didn’t.
Being sin-binned for dissent with a female ref is 'not a gender issue'?
Strangely, telling us what something is not became a bit of a theme. The aggressive, threatening and patently ugly on-field intimidation of referee Kasey Badger in the Tigers v Bulldogs game was not, according the Annesley, "a gender issue". Maybe not for David Klemmer — who’s mug will now be attached for all time to one of the most infamous photos in NRL history — but it could, and would have felt like a gender issue for Badger — and possibly many other women watching the match.
I’m not arguing with Annesley’s assertion that "plenty of players have towered over male referees", but I do take umbrage with the implication that it's all in a day’s work. Annesley doubles down when he suggests, "she’ll learn an enormous amount from that game". Well, we all did.
I do wonder how many of Badger’s male counterparts who have been towered over and "tested" also had to contend with the kinds of comments made about and directed towards her during and after the match. One source claimed "around 90%" of the abuse is sexist in nature. The NRL cannot be responsible for the social media accounts of everyone who watches the competition, but when Annesley says the kind of behaviour demonstrated by Klemmer and others in the match "can incite the fans", he tacitly acknowledges that those same players have a role to play in setting the example for fans to follow.
The real kicker here, once more, is that Annesley says "we have to know where the line in the sand is" but fails to articulate exactly where that line is.
I found a line myself that may go someway to illustrating the NRL could well have a gender issue. It’s in the NRL’s Laws of the Game, Section 16: Duties of Referees and Touch Judges.
"The referees shall enforce the Laws of the Game and may impose penalties for any deliberate breach of the Laws.
"He shall be the sole judge of the game."
SHARE ME