| NRL robs game of drama with confusing restart rule | | Print | |
| Wednesday, 27 May 2009 15:35 | |||
The Courier Mail If things were simple, they'd have got their eight seconds to have a crack at a field goal, but things just ain't simple. It was 16-all. Souths were deep in Parramatta territory, 20m in on the scrum line. Rabbitohs fullback Luke Capewell was positioned deep for the one pass, one kick, last-ditch play. What theatre it could have been. But no. The fulltime siren sounds and the ref, under the current rules, correctly calls the game off. Brilliant! Why? Because there's an absolutely ridiculous requirement for the six players who formed the scrum to stay bent over with their heads buried until the opposition, in their own sweet time, elect to come over and join in. If any one of them so much as lifts his head up to see what the delay is, the referee blows time back on. The point here is that the Parramatta players were stalling. They wanted a breather and it worked a treat. A Rabbitohs forward popped his head up for a look, the ref blew time on, the eight seconds ticked away and the fulltime siren sounded. I'll come back to the stupidity of the attacking players being the ones who are disadvantaged by having to stay bent over with heads in the scrum, but let's fast forward to Canberra's match against the Warriors on Sunday. It's right on halftime. The Warriors have trapped the Canberra Raiders in-goal, forcing the line-dropout. The Raiders, like the Parramatta Eels on Friday night, are in no hurry to restart play. They are stalling. The ref blows his whistle to indicate it's time to kick the ball. But the Raiders are still in no hurry. The halftime siren goes. Wait a minute! The siren went on Friday night and Craig Wing wasn't allowed to feed the scrum. What's this ref doing making Canberra take the line drop kick after the halftime siren has sounded? I rang Bill Harrigan for help. I sensed an anomaly. "Why doesn't the same rule apply for all restarts?" I inquired. Well, Bill explained that the ref had blown his whistle ordering the line drop-kick restart, so it had to be taken even though the siren had gone. Why then, if the attacking side (South Sydney) had won the right to have a scrum (the ref acknowledged that fact by blowing his whistle to stop the clock), can't the ref ignore the fulltime siren and allow the final play of the game? Why have a different rule governing restarts? In other words, why complicate things? Harrigan said that none of the refs likes the rule, it's an NRL ruling. As far as they are concerned, it would satisfy them if the six that form the scrum stand up but stay with arms over one another so there is no attempt to change scrum personnel. This was happening before the introduction of the head down, bum up, no peeking farce. If the refs get their way at the annual conference on rules, once time is stopped the clock won't restart until the scrum is about to be fed. At least that way whatever time is available is preserved. ON a slightly different tack, is it imagination or is it the play of the month that players are being sin-binned for repeated infringements? Seems to me the whistleblowers are becoming sensitive. Could it be they've finally realised their penalties have enormous influence on results? Naturally, in the modern spirit of not wanting to be held accountable, they'd argue that they don't award penalties, players concede them. How often is the captain called out for something that goes like this: "That's three penalties in a row for so-and-so. Any more and I'll sit someone down. Go back, talk to your players and fix it up." It's absurd. Refs don't want to wear the blame for tipping the scales in the game, yet as a deterrent to penalties they have decided to deliver the very thing that, in a tight game, almost guarantees the tipping of the scales. If there's a school of thought at referee headquarters that sin-binning players will lower the penalty count so refs appear to facilitate outcomes, not cause them, what magnitude of penalty and what influence on the game do they think reducing a team to 12 men has? THERE'S still a week to make a case for NSW in State of Origin One. Frankly I don't think the Blues selectors could do any better than they've done. So I'll work on arguments like, what's the big issue with experience? They all play against one another in the NRL. Or, Queensland will be red-hot favourites and vulnerable to complacency. All that sort of stuff. Just give me some time.
|