Opinion: Mike Colman says NRL coaches should be allowed to criticise the referees
HOW do you start those GoFundMe sites? I’m thinking of getting one going to help NRL coaches pay fines for criticising referees.
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HOW do you start those GoFundMe sites? I’m thinking of getting one going to help NRL coaches pay fines for criticising referees.
We’ll start with the combined $50,000 the Sharks’ Shane Flanagan and Sea Eagles’ Trent Barrett have been hit with following their comments on the weekend.
Fifty grand for that? Are they serious?
Flanagan and Barrett were simply echoing what all Cronulla and Manly fans — and plenty of supporters of other clubs — were saying after the two premiership contenders were dumped from the finals on the back of calls that were questionable at best.
If the NRL fines coaches and players for venting their frustrations in the minutes after a devastating loss, perhaps they should start censuring spectators and media commentators as well.
When Andrew Fifita was adjudged to have knocked on when the ball looked to go backwards through his legs, Fox analyst Greg Alexander noted: “Whenever the ball is dropped now it is a knock on. It doesn’t matter what direction it goes in, it’s automatically a knock on.”
Surely that’s worth five thousand bucks.
And what about those Manly fans pictured standing up booing and waving their arms after Penrith’s Tyrone Peachey was awarded a try after appearing to knock on?
Why not have on-the-spot fines and two week bans?
The fact is that rugby league is a passionate sport in which the highs and lows of everyday existence are replicated in 80 minutes of pure elation and despair.
That’s how it is for the fans, who can then get on with their lives, either happy or disappointed, but with plenty of other things to worry about. Imagine how it is for the coaches and players. They are paid to take part. It is their job, their livelihood. They love it, but they fear it as well. Win and they keep their job, their family eats; the mortgage is paid. Lose and they could be on the scrapheap.
That being the case, it would be nice if the game was an exact science. That all the variables were so perfectly controlled that there was never any doubt over 50:50 decisions. That it was officiated by robots or computers which never made mistakes.
Of course it is not, and until a better system can be found, there will always be human error on the part of referees.
That is only natural. What isn’t natural is for coaches, who have more to lose that anyone else in the game, to keep their mouths shut when they believe that incompetence has robbed them of the opportunity to fight another day.
Personally I thought the comments by Flanagan and Barrett were quite restrained. They didn’t infer anything untoward about the motives of the referees. Where they thought there were incorrect decisions, they highlighted and dissected them in a clear, rational manner.
Admittedly Flanagan used the word “disgraceful” and said the decisions he was unhappy with were “all wrong”. Perhaps, like Barrett he should have said the contentious calls were not correct, “in my opinion”.
Not that it did Barrett any good. He’s still $20,000 out of pocket.
So what are you allowed to say when you believe your team has been the victim of a refereeing blunder?
Following Beau Ryan’s infamous seventh-tackle try for the Sharks which sent the Cowboys packing in the 2013 finals, Cowboys’ coach Neil Henry said his team had been “dudded”, that the NRL had “got it arse about” and called it a schoolboy error “that you don’t see in local A grade”.
He said for two years the referees had “proven they’re not up to it” and their performance was “an embarrassment to the game”. He also spoke of a conspiracy to ensure a grand final between two Sydney clubs — a view repeated by Cowboys captain Johnathan Thurston the next day.
Neither was fined.
Obviously when it comes to the NRL if you accuse the referees of being incompetent it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it.
Or maybe sometimes they are just so obviously incompetent that even the NRL can’t deny it.
Originally published as Opinion: Mike Colman says NRL coaches should be allowed to criticise the referees
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