Then there’s blatant rule-bending that goes unchecked.
Trainers have been running around fields like army generals – barking orders from behind enemy lines, blatantly flouting the rules.
It’s only when they run through enemy lines, as Panthers trainer Corey Bocking did live in 4K on our television sets, that punishments occur.
When challenged with solid evidence that trainers are staying on the field beyond the fourth tackle, which is forbidden, the NRL says it’s the responsibility of ground managers to keep them in check.
OK, then. That’ll have the trainers quaking in their boots. How on earth is the ground manager going to stop trainers from directing players toward the perfect spot for a match-winning field goal?
Then, all of a sudden, blistering letters are sent to clubs from HQ warning about the conduct of trainers, even though the problem is years old.
Roosters trainer Travis Touma tries to laugh off his gaffe in the 2019 grand final.Credit: Channel Nine
Trainers should have had their wings checked after then-Roosters trainer Travis Touma was hit by the ball in the opening minutes of the 2019 grand final, costing the Raiders precious field position, possibly a try, and handing the ball back to the Roosters, who were about to lose it. In the end, it was Raiders fans losing it.
It was a line-in-the-sand moment on the game’s biggest stage.
Rules were said to be tightened then, but NRL rule tightening and on-field crackdowns are like workplace budget cuts. They’re in force for a while, then things get rubbery again, and another crackdown appears.
All the while, NRL chief operating officer Graham Annesley has been presiding. A popular figure, “Felix” has been around the game since father time, except for a dabble in politics.
He’s been an admirable public protector of referees, and for that, he should be congratulated, even when at times he comes across as a sitcom buffoon, telling us all with a straight face something hasn’t happened when it blatantly has, or some decision was correct, when it blatantly wasn’t.
Cue Benny Hill music.
Referee bashing is the game’s biggest blight, and at least he’s in their corner, often to his own public detriment.
The coaches and players, even the trainers, should be copping it for constantly flouting the rules, piling pressure on top of pressure to refs, not the refs themselves.
Annesley’s role means he’s not just the protector of the referees, he’s the protector of the rules. And a proper, thorough and disciplined protection of the rules, can lead to protection of the referees.
On top of that, he’s overseen the introduction of many rules that are ridiculous. Many of them add to the referee pile-on, through no fault of their own.
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Take, for instance, protection of the player in the air. An attacker and a defender leap for a bomb in the in-goal and, if the attacker grabs the ball, the defender has to somehow disappear, not contact the attacker on the way down, allowing him freely to score. It’s absurd, and completely not what the rule was supposed to be about – blatantly belting a player mid-air when no attempt is made to contest the ball at all.
We used to hear from Annesley every Monday to explain weekend decisions, but this year he’s been muzzled, because it often led to more dissection of decisions when the debate about many had already fizzled out. As well as ridicule when he defended the indefensible.
NRL HQ sin-binned him from that public appearance. The ultimate sin bin might lie just around the corner.
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