Why NRL should be sweating bullets about a grand final bunker bungle

The 2024 NRL grand final between the Penrith Panthers and Melbourne Storm should be a fitting finale to the season; an epic arm wrestle featuring the game’s shiniest stars.

Penrith should win because of the superior game management of Nathan Cleary, the one-two punch of James Fisher-Harris and Moses Leota, the long-life batteries that power Dylan Edwards. They slow-cook their opposition like they’re making a stew.

Melbourne should win because they have the best spine in the competition: the headless-chook craftiness of Cameron Munster, the control of Jahrome Hughes, the old-school toughness of Harry Grant, the blinding speed of Ryan Papenhuyzen. They run the opposition off its feet.

That’s how the grand final should be decided.

But there’s genuine concern in both camps that it will not; that some funky interpretation of the rules from the person sitting in the bunker will decide the result instead of the players, coaches, and the bounce of the ball.

While Penrith coach Ivan Cleary is “anxious” about the whole thing, it’s the NRL that should be sweating bullets about the bunker bungling the Big One.

Panthers winger Sunia Turuva celebrates a try that should never have been disallowed.Credit: Getty Images

Cleary received a minor rebuke from NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo after he questioned official Chris Butler’s decision to disallow a try in Saturday night’s preliminary final against Cronulla.

I can hear the frustration in Abdo’s voice each time I speak to him after a coach has criticised match officials in post-match media conferences. I get it.

His predecessor, Todd Greenberg, had a similar tone when he told reporters in the first week of the 2017 finals that rugby league needed to “grow up” about how it spoke about referees.

The oldest trick in a losing coach’s book is to go after the referees. When Greenberg lashed out that day, he was responding to criticism from Manly coach Trent Barrett and Cronulla’s Shane Flanagan, both of whom wanted to shift the focus from their team.

Even though Penrith won, some at the NRL believed Cleary’s post-match comments were designed to put pressure on whoever is in the hot seat this Sunday night, not necessarily Butler. Translation: don’t let us down again.

Cleary isn’t so manipulative. He tried to put pressure on the referees via a Herald story in the lead-up to the 2021 qualifying final against South Sydney and Wayne Bennett, a 10th dan black belt in media manipulation, outsmarted him.

The Panthers coach blamed himself for the 16-10 loss and apologised to his players. He’s given the media very little at this time of year since.

Rugby league’s bash-up of match officials is tiresome but at some point, Abdo and the NRL need to admit that the system is broken.

The Storm celebrate during their win over the Roosters.Credit: Getty Images

If they’re looking for proof, they only need to listen to the frustration in the voices of former players who either coach like Cleary or commentate like Andrew Johns and Phil Gould.

When Penrith winger Sunia Turuva scored in the corner in the 58th minute, the only discernible query was whether he nudged the sideline.

But the long hand of the bunker is never far away and an examination of whether Panthers lead runner Luke Garner had taken out Cronulla defender Siosifa Talakai was ordered.

Johns was apoplectic (“Talakai instigates the tackle”) while Gould sounded equally bemused and defeated (“That is so wrong”).

Butler ruled that Garner had “denied him [Talakai] any opportunity to defend” and the try was denied.

The game has twisted itself into a pretzel for years about how to rule on obstructions, mostly around which shoulder of the defender the lead runner runs into. Inside shoulder is good, outside shoulder bad.

This is where the system no longer works. Forget about which shoulder Garner ran into — it was Talakai’s inside shoulder by the way — and apply commonsense.

Did the bunker truly believe Talakai, all 100+ kilograms of him, could race up in defence as he did, realise Garner wasn’t going to get the ball, then stop in his tracks, then turn around, then sprint to the corner and stop the try?

The side-on view of the Talakai-Garner collision.Credit: Nine

Talakai did what every defender seems to do when a block play is in play: he took a dive. Rugby league has become a con job and everyone can see it except for the person with multiple camera angles in HD at their fingertips.

In the next set, prop Tom Hazelton slipped on the greasy Accor Stadium surface and Penrith hooker Mitch Kenny accidentally collected his bald head when it was about a foot from the ground.

It was an accident. Klein knew it too, telling Butler that Hazelton had slipped. Instead, Kenny was put on report and a penalty awarded.

“STOP IT!” Johns exploded like he was scolding a naughty puppy.

‘I can hear the frustration in Abdo’s voice each time I speak to him after a coach has criticised match officials.’

From the next set, Sharks winger Sione Katoa scored in the right corner with one of those acrobatic putdowns that have become the standard for wingers in the modern game.

After the try was awarded, though, a camera angle down the field showed Katoa dropping the ball as he shifted it from his right hand to the left.

That’s not one mistake from the bunker but three. In two minutes. In a preliminary final.

Lesser teams than the three-time defending premiers would have allowed such poor decision-making to change the course of the game.

Instead of admonishing Cleary, Abdo should be thanking his team for saving them from the embarrassment of denying them a possible fourth consecutive title.

Few codes whinge about match officials more than rugby league. It’s often hysterical and personal and it filters all the way down the line to the sidelines at junior football where parents rant at 15-year-old referees doing their best.

Retired whistleblower Matt Cecchin endured death threats. Ben Cummins went into hiding after his set-restart error in the 2019 grand final.

“I’ve thought about a lot worse than just walking away,” he told me the following year.

Asked if he was suicidal, he said: “I’m not proud of it, but I thought about it. I was in a dark place after the grand final. Being ashamed of your performance, there’s not a lot of people you want to talk to. If people could just realise what goes on inside your head when these things happen. Not just for myself but my family.”

The NRL needs to protect their officials as much as appeasing clubs and fans by making the game easier to adjudicate.

For years, the game has been strangled by ever-changing rules, interpretations, and the over-use of the technology. It’s footy, not a PlayStation game, and rolling out head of football Graham Annesley to make sense of it all on a Monday afternoon no longer cuts it.

The grand final should be a modern-day classic, decided by some of the greatest players of their generation.

But will it?

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