NRL Judiciary lottery hits new low after Sam Burgess fine, writes Paul Kent
Sam Burgess getting off with a fine for his high shot on Matt Moylan again highlighted the major issues with the NRL judiciary, and it might be the final straw for frustrated fans, writes Paul Kent.
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Josh McGuire is too smart not to fight the judiciary charge handed to him on Friday.
McGuire, with wandering hands and bad eye, faces a two to three week ban for another facial.
But he also knows there is every chance he walks out of Tuesday’s judiciary hearing not only free to play this weekend but grasping in his mischievous little hands free return flights to Fiji and a Christmas meat hamper.
Anything can happen at the judiciary nowadays.
Risk has been mixed with reward.
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Nobody knows what to expect anymore and I am not surprised.
Many years ago I am covering the judiciary when Jason Smith and Julian Troy are suspended for careless high tackles.
This is the NRL’s first season when everybody is very proud of the new system. It is set to deliver consistency and fairness better than ever before, goes their pitch.
Then the guilty verdicts are hammered down this night and Parramatta coach Brian Smith stands with his eyes ablaze.
The judicial system, he says, with three ex-players adjudicating within a legal system, is “three oranges in a box full of apples”.
“I understand why they have ex-players on the panel, I understand the system they have put in place, but we had apples and oranges in the one place last night,” he says.
It is a reasonable analogy that survives today, but with a simple twist.
Smith argued the judiciary was weighted too far in favour of the match review committee’ video evidence with less weight given to players’ testimony.
At some point the NRL addressed this until, somewhere, the opposite now holds true.
Sam Burgess got downgraded for a tackle severe enough that it ruled Matt Moylan out with a concussion for a fortnight but not serious enough to cost Burgess a game.
LISTEN! Brett Finch and Paul Kent are back in the studio with Matty Johns to dig out some fun memories for 70’s Retro Round, offer suggestions to help the southern Queensland teams get back on track, analyse Kalyn Ponga’s mega-deal and Kenty details his Tuesday feud with Ivan Cleary.
Jake Trbojevic up-ended Jahrome Hughes in a tackle so dangerous Hughes passed right by the dangerous position and landed safely on his back and of course he was also free to play.
Both have contributed to a growing lack of confidence in the judicial process.
In a bid to offset fan frustration the NRL revealed in Friday’s Telegraph that it is considering streaming future judicial hearings so fans can witness the hearing.
Having covered a thousand in my early years as a reporter I can say there are nights when clubs fight their case particularly well or particularly poorly.
The best example happened last year when Billy Slater gave the greatest performance ever at the judiciary to escape a charge for a shoulder charge and was free to play in the grand final.
Slater’s crucial evidence was that he had watched every try Sosaia Feki had scored and in every one Feki pinned his eyes and went for the corner. Not once did Feki step inside.
Until this time, when Slater shoulder charged him.
“When he plants that left foot his intention changes from going directly to the corner post to going directly at me,” Slater told the judiciary.
“My shoulders and my feet are heading directly to that corner post. He changes and this puts me in a vulnerable position.”
Slater’s excellent defence counsel, Nick Ghabar, then clarified it for the judiciary: “What I’m putting to you — this is a situation where a player did not make a conscious decision to use his shoulder.”
NRL counsel Anthony Lo Surdo might be a brilliant lawyer but he seemed ill-equipped to handle the intricacies of the game.
All Lo Surdo needed to point out was a tackle a year earlier when Sia Soliola knocked out the same Billy Slater with a high tackle after Slater propped and slipped late.
In all the vision on Slater nobody had ever seen him slip and drop, like he just dropped down a shaft, like that. In many ways, the runner’s late movement drew comparisons to Feki.
But it was irrelevant.
The onus was always on Soliola, the defender, to keep the tackle safe - the same as it should have when Slater tackled Feki. Soliola got five weeks, all Slater got was to play in the grand final.
Ghabar outsmarted Lo Surdo that night and he outsmarted the NRL’s Peter McGrath on Tuesday when he argued Burgess’s tackle was the lowest of punishable tackles in rugby league.
He said Burgess made first contact “at the base of the neck”, as if it wasn’t really that high.
Nobody argued the base of the neck is still the neck, which is still illegal.
Ghabar also stated, “There was no evidence of any injury to Moylan”.
McGrath did not counter that several hours earlier Moylan had been ruled out for a fortnight after failing the club’s concussion test.
Like Smith’s complaint more than 20 years earlier, the three on the judiciary panel seemed mesmerised by the zest of the legal argument and heartily agreed.
The NRL counsel appear intelligent enough to present their argument but not to argue it. Here, in argument, Ghabar is the heavyweight champ.
Would televising the hearing fix this?
More likely it would add to the frustration. Fans know the game well enough to identify the inconsistencies and hypocrisies that present itself in argument.
What fans want from the judiciary is fairness. Nobody should be hung unless it’s a hanging offence and the innocent should walk free.
Too often, though, fairness escapes the process. Clever argument is king.
The problem is now Burgess’s tackle will go into the NRL logbook as a “comparable” for a grade one charge. As will the Trbojevic tackle for dangerous tackles.
The “comparables” were introduced to bring consistency to the charge but they give no consideration to changing times or that the example given — as the Burgess and Trbojevic tackles will surely be — might be incorrectly graded in the first place.
Two weeks ago NRL head of football Graham Annesley defended the referees’ bunker, arguing there will always be human error in any judgment process.
The judiciary and match review committee seem incapable of recognising this.
The problem is not the system. The problem is the incompetence or lack of industry knowledge, within the system, from the match review committee through to the hearing.
Fans will cop a player escaping a charge through clever argument but only when it is the anomaly.
They will not cop it becoming a regular occurrence.
It sounds so simple but it is a bigger problem than it appears.
If human error continues to repeat itself then all that there is to do is replace the human.
There seems no appetite for that inside headquarters, which remains McGuire’s greatest hope.
MISGUIDED NRL SHOULD CONSIDER FINALS RETHINK
It was only earlier this year the NRL was considering expanding the play-offs from eight to 10 to under the guise of wild card games.
The move was a cynical ploy to add a couple more playoffs games at the end of the season and also keep more games alive, and therefore draw bigger crowds and bigger television ratings, later into the season, but was more a disguise than a guise.
Last year’s unusual finals series, where teams one through to eight were separated by just two competition points, with a substantial break, to ninth, seemed to support the move.
Forget about the fact that after 25 games half the competition, as it currently stands, already qualify for the finals.
A look at this year’s table reveals teams below Parramatta on the table really don’t deserve a shot at the title after their season’s performance, but two teams will.
The Broncos now sit in eighth spot after their last minute win over North Queensland but still have a losing record, nine wins, 10 losses and a draw, for the season.
There is every chance one team and possibly two will qualify for the finals with a losing record.
The great American coach Vince Lombardi once said “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”.
The NRL motto seems to be, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s not even necessary”.
Rather than expand the finals to 10 teams the NRL should really consider reducing them from eight.
Originally published as NRL Judiciary lottery hits new low after Sam Burgess fine, writes Paul Kent
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