Referees - By Hayley

Fans of Rugby League may disagree on a lot of things within the game but one thing we can agree on is that the refereeing of late has been inconsistent and of a poor standard. So why are the referees so bad? Here are my thoughts on the issue.

Firstly, with the technology these days we can view the game in so many more angles which means we see more. The referees probably have always been terrible; we just haven’t had the proof!

On a more serious note, the main issue seems to be inconsistency with the calls. There are two parts to this; inconsistency when calling penalties, they are too lenient in some areas; and inconsistency due to interpretation of the rules.

When calling penalties, the referees give out too many warnings especially for offside. Players know the rules and will try and bend them as far as they are allowed to by the referees. I have Sports Ears and listen to the referee’s during the games and constantly hear them warning players to get back to the referee. Sometimes these warnings even come when there is a break in play and the referee will approach the offending player to let them know to watch the 10m and to ensure they get back. Why are the players getting warnings? What advantage does this give the attacking team? They know they need to have 1 foot behind the referee; if they don’t get back then it should be a penalty.

This inconsistency in policing the rules is feeding on teams’ ill-discipline. Because the players can get away with certain things with just a warning, they are trying to bend the rules as much as possible. The referee then gets to a certain point when they feel they’ve given enough warnings and they start penalising. Leaving anything up to the referee’s interpretation just screams inconsistency.

The referees need to be harsh and they need to penalise for every infringement right from the beginning of the game. If a player doesn’t make the 10m, call a penalty straight away. Some people might have an issue with this as they think there are already too many penalties blown during a game. I think the reason there are too many penalties blown are because the players are trying to get away with as much as they can. If they know they’re going to get penalised for every small infringement, they will quickly learn to not bend the rules.

Inconsistency with calls is a quick and easy win. Now for the bigger issue; interpretation of the rules. As I mentioned earlier, leaving anything up to the interpretation of the referee is always leaving the door open to inconsistency. Different people interpret things differently so how can it be a level playing field for the teams if one referee views something more harshly than another? Not only does the interpretation differ from game to game but it differs within a game due to the 2 referee structure.

If you look at the rules within the game, it’s hard to blame the referees for the inconsistency. There are too many grey areas and teams are getting better at exploiting those grey areas. Earlier in the year the NRL changed the obstruction rule so it wasn’t so grey; it was black and white. The NRL then crumbled under pressure and changed the rule and now it’s left up to interpretation. Need I say it again, interpretation leads to inconsistency! Coaches should be adjusting their game plans to suit the rules. The rules should not be changed due to coaches complaining.

If you have black and white rules, the expectation is set and leaves little room for complaints about decisions that have been made by referees. Players, coaches and fans know if they do a certain thing, then a particular outcome will come from it. You won’t be seeing issues with certain teams/players getting away with something another team/player has done in the past.

A big issue at the moment is teams feeling like they are being treated differently by the refs than others. The referees do their homework prior to a game and analyse the teams they are refereeing that weekend. While I agree with this to an extent, I feel like it is giving the referees a pre-conceived idea heading into the game. They should be refereeing what they see in front of them, not based on an opinion they have already formed.

Once the issue of inconsistency has been sorted then we can move onto fixing people’s views on incompetence. I won’t make any comments on this as I don’t have a spare $10k. What I will say is it seems that referees currently have no accountability. If you follow me on twitter you may have noticed that is bugs me when the video ref intervenes on certain incorrect decisions and not others. I think the video ref should overturn a decision at any point in the game if they see the ref to have made an incorrect call. I think this would help to create accountability as the on field referee is seeing the immediate repercussions.

I’m not saying these are the answers to fix the current state of refereeing but these are my thoughts on where Daniel Anderson could begin.

Love,

@LadiesWhoLeague