Referees won’t back down from penalty crackdown, says the NRL
WE’LL keep blowing that whistle. That’s the vow from the NRL despite a torrent of backlash from former champions, players and fans.
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WE’LL keep blowing that whistle.
That’s the vow from the NRL, who despite a torrent of backlash from commentators, former champions, players and fans, are refusing to backdown from the game’s current penalty crisis.
NRL head of football Brian Canavan has declared that the referees heavy-handed policing of rules will continue unrelenting, as directed by the NRL competition committee, which includes Greg Inglis, Ivan Cleary, Paul Green and Darren Lockyer.
The unflinching stand by the NRL comes as Fox Sports statistics supplied to The Sunday Telegraph show that the staggering 30 penalties blown in Cronulla’s win over Melbourne on Friday night is the most amount of penalties blown over 80-minutes since the NRL-era began in 1998.
Ahead of Saturday’s matches, an average of 18.5 penalties per game had been blown over the first month — or, one penalty just over every four minutes.
On the back of a combined 54 penalties during the Souths-Canterbury and Cronulla-Melbourne matches on Friday, league immortal Bob Fulton joined fellow great Andrew Johns in condemning the crackdown.
“The whole 80-minutes (between Cronulla and Melbourne) was embarrassing for the referees, it was embarrassing for the players and it was embarrassing for our game,’’ Fulton said.
However, pointing to an acceptance to abide by the rules from coaches Wayne Bennett, Shane Flanagan and Craig Bellamy, Canavan said the only possibility of the NRL backflipping on their stance is when the competition committee meets in mid-May.
“We’ve got to keep the key elements of the game in terms of the rules intact and that’s what we’ll be doing through the season,’’ Canavan said on Triple M.
“Areas of the game just have to be tidied up. There’s no two ways about it.
“We’ve convinced that this is for the betterment of the game.
“The referees are working in a slightly different area than they have in the past, we’ve got to compliment the referees who are doing a job as they have been instructed to do by the competition committee.’’
“In the last 24 hours we’ve had three very senior coaches in our game say this is an adjustment time. Wayne Bennett said this area needs to be addressed while Shane Flanagan and Craig Bellamy last night were very objective in their appraisal of it.’’
Canavan said it was the competition committee — which also includes former coach John Lang, NRL CEO Todd Greenberg, ARL commissioner Wayne Pearce, former player Jason King and referees boss Tony Archer — who made a decision last year to implement the crackdown.
“The competition committee addressed what was frustrating in the game and the predominant ones were the play-the-ball and the defensive line,’’ Canavan said.
“Then we came up with the decision to enforce it more stringently in the 2018 season.
“It’s an adjustment period for coaches, for players and indeed our referees.
“We will continue to consult with our competition committee and indeed our formal meeting is coming up in mid-May.
“We’re convinced that with the way we’re addressing these specific areas of our game that the game will be better towards the tail-end of the season.’’
On Saturday, Bennett said he was a fan of the crackdown.
“If the game blinks, the coaches will be back in control,” he said.
“If the game stays strong, we have to make sure our players are adhering to the rules. They’re just enforcing the rules, they haven’t made any new ones.’’