Refs basking in glory of NRL’s honeymoon period

Honeymoon periods are the best. So when the speedy new NRL returned to action we gave the referees a break. For once.

Cameron Smith only has one referee to argue with since the NRL’s return

Honeymoon periods are the best. Anything goes. The object of your affection is talking with a mouth full of cereal. Who cares!

She wants to go shopping for shoes. Who cares! Four hours of snoring. Who cares! The in-laws are pests. Who cares! You’ve been waiting so long to get the show on the road that you see no evil, hear no evil. Flaws in the system … who cares! Play on!

The NRL has completed its honeymoon round. We’ve been so love-struck after an eight-week separation that glitches are being overlooked. Everything has been viewed through rose-coloured glasses.

Long may it continue when it comes to the lenient treatment of referees. The poor buggers are going to make more errors in this new turbo-speed era. It’s inevitable. Is Usain Bolt still looking for a job? Give him a whistle and a parking pass for Central Coast Stadium. He’s been there before.

Otherwise, refereeing imperfections will be the price for more frenetic football. Fullbacks are going to run more metres than Vow And Declare.

Backrowers are going to make more tackles than another great work horse, Ray Price. There will be more line breaks. More rucks. Cleaner play-the-balls. Less UFC. More tries.

What are we prepared to give in return? The honeymoon round has come and gone so quickly that refereeing blunders have barely rated a mention. We have copped them sweet, and long may we be so accepting of the inevitability of their most unfortunate and challenging affliction. They’re human.

Monday’s newspapers have been a shock to the system. Not only were there match reports and action photographs, in all their glory, but there hasn’t been one whinge about a whistleblower from a defeated coach.

I hope it lasts. If we were this happy to be swept off our feet by sped-up play, we have to accept there’s going to be a rise in errors from all concerned. Errors from players, through exhaustion. Errors from referees, through them blinking and missing Something. So what. Play on.

There were a handful of dubious calls in round three that would have been backpage news in the past. Refereeing crisis, et cetera. But it’s all happened so quickly that the next phase of play has begun before anyone has shaken a fist in anger.

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There’s been no time to go back to the video. Why has the honeymoon round been so good? Because it’s been the opposite to stop-start-stop rugby, obsessed with the tedium of intricate technical breaches.

With one ref, two refs, half-a-dozen refs or 30,000 grandstand refs, there will be errors. Let’s cop it sweet. Let’s cop it like a golfer doing a pitch-and-run at the British Open, only to get a bad bounce. Play on.

You’re going to get dud calls in league. You get them in tennis despite every line having an official staring at it. You get them in cricket despite an umpire, who doesn’t have to run, needing to concentrate on only a 22-yard strip. You’re going to get accidentally shafted by the referee in league. You’re going to get lucky. Every refereeing call has been crucial in the slogging arm wrestles of the deep dark past — rounds one and two.

Now the ball is in play for longer than before, now the fittest players will be rewarded more than ever before, now the fastest players will get more opportunities than ever before, now cunning dummy-halves will have more scope than ever before, I think the best team is more likely to win any given match than ever before.

One referee is better than two. He has a better feel for proceedings. He doesn’t have to check everything with his other half. Cooks, broth.

There’s a better rhythm and flow when he is left to his own devices. If he misses something … always an accident … perhaps we have to be more accepting of it than ever before.

The Daily Telegraph’s Paul Kent has written a terrific column on Tuesday about referees boss Bernie Sutton not getting a single cranky post-round email from a coach for the first time since forever ago.

There’s been absence of irate calls to morning sports radio programs — well, none that I have heard — about such-and-such team being robbed by such-and-such an incorrect call. We shouldn’t mistake this for meaning there’s been no clangers. There’s been a few. But they’ve come and gone so quickly — play on! — that we have turned a blind eye.

Which is easy to do now. Both Christmas and the NRL finals are coming, not as far apart as they used to be, and for now there’s not too much urgency about the results.

We don’t have a stadium full of fans, hurling insults and boos. The most feral of supporters aren’t throwing water bottles at full time. They’re not screaming their lungs out from the hill. Get ‘Em onside! All day, ref! And so forth!

Only if Fox Sports’ boss Steve Crawley adds canned abuse to the applause will the men in the middle start copping it.

Later in the year, when we are down to the nitty gritty of the finals, there will be less inclination to accept the good with the bad. But if the compromise for action-packed league is turning a blind eye to a few more refereeing misses, who says I do? I do.