Accountability a foreign concept for NRL’s floundering football department

AS footballing crisis embroil rugby league yet again, the NRL’s football department is once again silent. Accountability seems to be a foreign word at League Central says PAUL KENT.

LEAGUE Central is beginning to look like a post office wall.

“Missing person: Brown haired man, 191cm, 109kg at his prime but now sporting a few extra kilos. Answers to general manager of elite competitions, NRL.”

“Have you seen me? Grey-haired man, slightly shorter and significantly lighter than his offsider. Boasts an extensive portfolio, lightly used, answers to Head of Football.”

The NRL’s football department has gone missing.

Send out a search party, there are questions to be answered

Garth Brennan wants clarification on what constitutes a knock-on. Trent Barrett needs a reminder on what is a forward pass in the modern game, and why it is different to how he remembers it.

Where is Jason King when the game needs him?

Wayne Bennett needs to know why a player outside his top 30 can come off the bench but not actually start the game.

So many questions, nobody to answer them …

The Raiders want to know why even bother punishing a player if the NRL just rolls in over the top of their decision, anyway.

The Raiders were overruled on the Jack Wighton call. AAP Image/Brendon Thorne.

On it goes …

The entire game sits confused, wondering why we were forced to endure a penalty crackdown at the beginning of the season, which caused enormous unrest but was done with the deliberate purpose to stop the deliberate exploiting of rules for competitive advantage, when the game has now returned to how it was before this all started, anyway.

All this, and that was just the weekend.

In the days before the fans of international football got excited about the Australian Rugby League Commission’s announcement of, well, nothing it turned out.

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The ARLC announced plans for a return to Kangaroo tours next year, to the great delight of international fans, only they were not really Kangaroos tours in the manner everyone was led to believe, and they didn’t really have any right to announce it given the Rugby League International Federation had no idea and it went against the very schedule the ARLC had agreed to just last year.

And still Billy Slater remains the Wally Lewis Medallist even after judge Darren Lockyer let slip that the judges were given the points tally from all three games “as a guide” to naming their man of the series, but figured Billy was so far ahead they would name him, anyway.

The fans deserve answers on the decision to hand Billy Slater the medal.

Go figure.

And from all these calamities the NRL’s two men in charge — Jason King and Brian Canavan — have said nothing.

Missing In Action.

They could walk into a game and unless they had their names pinned to their foreheads nobody would know what they were doing there.

Accountability is a foreign concept at the NRL.

Forward passes have been allowed to go by all season seemingly without any attempt from within to explain how they keep getting it wrong or how they will fix it.

Brennan has a right to know what makes a knock-on nowadays. Sure, technically, it could be argued Sean O’Sullivan’s try actually was a try. He pushed the ball into the goalpost pad and it rolled down the pad before bouncing forward.

It could also be argued, technically, that it wasn’t.

Why was Sean O’Sullivan’s try awarded? Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images.

I once witnessed Bill Harrigan, as referees boss, take a tour through the rule book to justify why Greg Inglis’s knock-on in Origin was a try and it made perfect sense, even though he never once went to the chapter on scoring.

It was magnificent, and doubly so given it was always a knock-on.

Certainly O’Sullivan did not react like he had just scored his very first NRL try.

For all the spin for how the video referee has improved the NRL’s decision making, at some point human involvement is necessary and while our officials don’t have the feel or courage for a correct decision there will always be the clangers.

But isn’t it King and Canavan’s job to restore public faith?

Either through a nicely placed size 10 or a subtle explanation why the clanger we just saw will not happen again, or at least the person who made it won’t be seen again.

Public faith in the NRL has never been more fragile than it is now.

The goodwill built by generations of good, solid decisions has been eroded by a current administration that lacks fortitude, clarity and vision.

Their job seems to be all about the management of their job, not the outcome.

The opposite of what this game should stand for, and once did.

Originally published as Accountability a foreign concept for NRL’s floundering football department