Monday Buzz: Phil Rothfield’s weekend highlights and lowlights

It’s the snub that proves Channel Nine’s rugby league producers have completely lost touch with the game. Buzz’s weekend highlights and lowlights.

Trent Robinson and Wayne Bennett gave explosive post-match interviews.

Sport’s Editor-at-Large Phil Rothfield runs the rule over another weekend of NRL action in his Monday Buzz column.

HIGHLIGHT

Trent Robinson’s emotional post-match press conference on the Latrell Mitchell and Joey Manu incident. He’ll cop a fine but his comments were spot on and needed to be said on behalf of Roosters fans.

The race to the 2021 NRL Telstra Finals Series is on and every game matters. Watch Live & Ad-Break Free on Kayo. New to Kayo? Try 14-days free >

Latrell Mitchell’s sickening hit on Joey Manu. Picture: Fox Sports

LOWLIGHT

More players lying down and faking injuries from accidental crusher tackles or high shots to milk penalties.

SHOOSH

Channel Nine is a proud news network that employs some of the country’s finest journalists. Sadly their rugby league producers don’t share the same news sense. On Friday night the network didn’t even cover the Trent Robinson or Wayne Bennett press conferences on the biggest story of the year.

Trent Robinson and Wayne Bennett gave explosive post-match interviews.

SHOOSH

Despite a long overdue victory over St George Illawarra, we’re hearing the North Queensland Cowboys coach Todd Payten remains under enormous pressure to keep his job next year.

SHOOSH

There is a queue beginning to form for rookie St George-Illawarra utility Jayden Sullivan, who is free to talk to rival clubs from November. A handful of clubs have already reached out to his agent Mario Tartak to lodge expressions of interest.

SPOTTED

NSW Swifts stars Tayla Fraser and Helen Housby celebrate their Super netball grand final win with Olympic bronze medallist Patty Mills.

Patty Mills celebrates with Swifts stars Tayla Fraser and Helen Housby.

SPOTTED

A nag called Buzz winning at Goulburn on Saturday at the juicy odds of $19. And your columnist didn’t have a penny on it.

360 VIEW

Catch you Monday on NRL 360 at 6.30pm on Fox League with Yvonne Sampson, Paul Kent and James Hooper to discuss a massive weekend of rugby league news and drama. It will be followed by the final episode of the excellent documentary Wild Wests: Tales from Tiger Town.

BUSTED BUNKER

Rugby league’s biggest issue going into the finals is inconsistency from the bunker and referees.

Every game, every week there is too much confusion around too many different interpretations of the rules.

Tom Trbojevic was awarded a try at Redcliffe against the Bulldogs where he clearly lost the football in a magnificent tackle by Jack Hetherington.

Then we had the absurd penalty on Bulldogs forward Joe Stimson for pulling the hair of Marty Tapau. Seriously, it was a nothing incident.

You go back to Thursday night and the Gold Coast Titans v Newcastle Knights game.

The Titans’ outstanding young fullback Jayden Campbell kicks on the last tackle from about 20 metres out. He has the speed to put himself into a try-scoring position but is knocked over by a Newcastle defender.

The Titans get the penalty. Every day of the week this is a professional foul and a sin-bin yet the Knights kept 13 players on the field.

Gold Coast got beaten by 15-14 in a match they had to win to stay alive in the race to the finals.

The NRL has promised us that the match review committee will be the subject of a review at the end of the season. So too should the refereeing department and the bunker officials.

Referees are human and will always make mistakes but it’s not too much to expect at least a reasonable level of consistency. That’s all the fans want.