‘Out of control’: NRL head of football Graham Annesley hits back at whingeing coaches

A senior figure in the NRL has some strong words for coaches and other pundits who blame match officials for their teams’ underperformance.

Graham Annesley said he was one of few willing to stick up for the referees. Picture: AAP Image/James Gourley

The NRL’s head of football Graham Annesley has put the league’s coaches on notice, saying that criticism of NRL match officials has become “out of control” in recent weeks.

Speaking at his weekly briefing on Monday, Annesley said it was “rubbish” to blame referees for defeats and suggested that teams who lost games should focus on improving their own performance rather than taking aim at match officials.

“The level of criticism that’s been coming about match officials after games I think is over the top. I think it’s unjustified,” Annesley told reporters.

“Although there are decisions that clubs don’t like and that they may think should have gone the other way, they are not necessarily wrong decisions.

“If you ask the fans and the supporters of the opposition team, they’d be saying the decision is 100 per cent right.

“We’re getting these marginal decisions and there’s a lot of them in our game.

“I just think (the criticism) has got a little bit out of control recently. We’ll see one incident in a game and then the whole post-match discussion is about that incident.

“We focus in on one or two decisions that a referee might make and say, ‘We lost the game because of that’.

“Frankly, it’s just rubbish.”

Nathan Cleary’s tackle on Dragons fullback Jack Bird infuriated Anthony Griffin. Picture: Chris Hyde/Getty Images

Annesley’s comments came after Dragons coach Anthony Griffin, Bulldogs coach Trent Barrett and Sharks coach Josh Hannay all lashed specific refereeing calls in their sides’ losses last weekend.

Coaching against his former club for the first time, Griffin bemoaned “a couple of dodgy calls” in Penrith’s defeat of his side.

He was particularly scathing of a tackle made by Panthers halfback Nathan Cleary that he believed was a shouldercharge.

“It was a clear-cut shoulder charge; that’s the one they brought the rule in for where you don’t use your arms,” Griffin claimed after the 34-16 loss.

Barrett was left “frustrated” on Sunday when the Bulldogs had a try disallowed after Sione Katoa was ruled to have hit Warriors player Edward Kosi high and late in the lead-up to the would-be four-pointer.

The coach said the Bulldogs had “the try that got us back in the game got taken off us for reasons I still don’t know”.

“It wasn’t a high tackle, it wasn’t late and we get a try taken off us. I still can’t work out why and I’ve had a look at it again,” Barrett said.

Hannay said the Sharks were “shattered” to have lost against Newcastle in the last game of round 22 and lamented the referee’s “tough” decision to penalise Cronulla for dragging Bradman Best into the Knights in-goal after “held” had been called.

“Every week, every game you see people driven back into the in-goal, that’s part of the game,” Hannay said.

“For that to be a penalty … they march up the other end and then kick the winning goal from that.”

Trent Barrett was frustrated with a disallowed try. Picture: Mark Evans/Getty Images

Annesley said the referees made the right call on all three occasions and questioned the logic of blaming individual decisions for losses.

He added that referees “very rarely” cost a team the game and match officials were not to blame for defeats recorded in round 22.

“Many of these incidents happen at different stages of games where teams have got every opportunity to go on and win the game if they’re good enough,” he said.

“But what I’ve seen over recent weeks, while some of these criticisms have been going on, is that teams have lost games because they haven’t been good enough to win them. That’s why they’ve lost games.

“Frankly, it’s time other people accepted responsibility for the outcomes of some games.”

Annesley said teams’ unforced errors and missed tackles had “a far greater impact on the outcome of a game than one or two refereeing decisions that might be arguable about whether they were right or they were wrong”.

Annesley said the increased competition for spots in the NRL’s top eight may be responsible for the spike in criticism levelled at match officials.

Both Hannay and Griffin’s teams had been well and truly in the fight for top eight spots prior to round 22, but their losses over the weekend now put them one win behind the teams sitting in eighth and ninth on the ladder.

“We’ve a scramble for positions in the eight and for making the eight. The eight’s still far from settled,” Annesley said

“I get the pressure everyone’s under. We’re all under pressure.”

Annesley said not just coaches but media personalities and other pundits within the game should rethink their criticism of match officials

“They’re entitled to opinion, I’m not trying to stop them from having an opinion, but it’s the intensity of the criticism,” he said.

Annesley said it was not for him to determine whether coaches would be fined for their comments over the weekend.

“My role is about what happens on the field. There are other people at the NRL in other roles that determine whether our rules have been breached in relation to post-match comment,” he said.

Originally published as ‘Out of control’: NRL head of football Graham Annesley hits back at whingeing coaches