I watch NRL 360 on Fox Sports every Tuesday-Thursday without fail and also tune in to Sterlo on Thursdays - I no longer bother with Channel Nine's NRL shows and immediately change the Channel whenever Matthew Johns and his idiot brigade pop up after the Monday night game. Like the new TV show Open Slather, I put that in the 'just for bogans' category. There's a few issues within the NRL that I would like to raise for discussion and improvement and give an overview of the weekend of games.
This weeks issue - THE VIDEO REFEREE - WTF?
There's been a lot of discussion about the system of how try's are sent to the video referee. The current system is that if a referee is not certain if the team has absolutely scored, they refer it to the video referee for investigation. However, the referee must make a call whether he thinks if its most probably a try or most probably not a try - it's based on what they saw or didn't see, a gut feeling or a down right guess. they do not have the ability to say that they have no idea. The impact of this is that the video referee must have conclusive evidence to overturn their decision and if they don't and cannot prove otherwise, then the referees probable viewpoint is awarded as the official decision - even if it was a guess, yes. This has caused great annoyance of late by coaches and it is suggested that we should move to a captain's call model. Whereby the referee makes a ruling and the captains of the teams can choose to challenge the decision or let it stand. I do like this idea as it works well in other sports and in the Holden Cup, however an incident this weekend just goes to show that even a captain's call situation will not get us any closer to justice.
This weekend during a very exciting game in Canberra, the Raiders were trailing the Sharks 16-18 during the latter stages of the game. Interestingly enough, they managed to get 2 penalties in succession that were within very good striking range of the posts and kicked two goals to lead 20-18 - was that just luck, terrible discipline, a bit of both or bit a dodgy? Well that's another story anyway.
So the referee on the field saw this try as probably a genuine try but sent it up to the video referee to check and they looked at the same video evidence you can see here on the highlights reel and they found "conclusive evidence" to overturn the referee's decision. Can you? No neither can anyone else. In this day of high gambling on NRL games, you really can't help question whether this was a justifiable decision or a mistake or perhaps just plain corruption.
See for yourself : Sharks Try
ROUND 19
My Team : BULLDOGS - played well to beat the EELS but too many errors still which bombed at least 3 more tries. Hasler has coached them to stand and defend and this allows the opposition to get at least 5 metres every time and the faster backs easily scoot around the heavy footed forwards. They need to be more hungry in defence and get up in the face of the opposition. Eastwood needs to learn he is a forward and has no right to kick the ball, Tolman needs to learn how to do something when in possession and Kasiano has to keep his fat gut out of the way so he doesn't drop the ball so much.
BEST PLAYERS - Pritchard - B.Morris - C. Rona
STORM washed PANTHERS away for 2015 52-10
SHARKS overcame stupidity to edge out ref assisted RAIDERS 21-20
KNIGHTS who cares over TITANS 30-2
RABBITS lucky to beat a sterile DRAGONS 24-8
ROOSTERS rooted the WARRIORS 24-0
BRONCOS beat the buck out of TIGERS 52-16
SEA EAGLES and COWBOYS to round it off tonight.
LADDER
32 BRONCOS
*28 COWBOYS
26 ROOSTERS
24 RABBITS
22 STORM
22 BULLDOGS
22WARRIORS
22 SHARKS
20 Dragons
18 Raiders
18 Eels
*16 Sea Eagles
Gone
16 Knights
16 Titans
14 Tigers
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