It will be really exciting to venture back home this week.
Our crazy draw has made the season somewhat challenging to get enthused about. I am no fan of the NRL headquarters but I can also imagine the difficulties that must surround a draw factoring in byes, turnarounds, stadium availability and the like.
However, having just three games at home since our round 6 Easter Monday game has made this footy season very stop start.
That all changes this week as we enter the last eight rounds of the regular season. Six, count them, six games at home.
I know for certain that our supporters will turn up and I know that will help our team. It won’t guarantee victory but it will create the best possible environment for our team to step up and gain momentum . My family will certainly look forward to making our almost weekly drives up to Sydney to have some fun and support our boys.
In talking about having some fun I want to comment on my experience last Saturday night at Leichhardt.
I don’t like the facilities at the ground but given that it’s not our home ground, it doesn’t bother me too much.
Nice work Maika!
We sat on the hill amongst a mixture of Tigers and Eels supporters and had some wonderful conversations. While I know there is some animosity between the clubs, I respect the Tigers fans who turn up each week and continue to support their club despite their views about the constant turmoil and despite the constant media bashing they receive.
When you consider a game day family ticket to sit on the hill on a winters evening cost $120, these fans should be listened to.
But another conversation that had almost universal agreement and does concern me was the terrible standard of NRL officials.
The NRL needs to stop and think why so many people complain and even entertain the view that mistakes are not simply mistakes.
After Round 8 this year I decided to only watch Parra games but each week I see the touch judge miss blatant forward passes from dummy half, including some from our team.
Despite missing such blatant forward passes throughout the game on Saturday, they somehow called a forward pass on Reed Mahoney to disallow a try.
Common sense dictates that it can’t be forward. The player was facing the opposition try line and passing the ball back over his head. It was impossible for it to go forward.
In addition to this, the timing for penalties being blown are so predictable. My family can’t be the only ones predicting when the referee will blow the whistle.
Brandon Smith deserves to be in trouble because he said something which isn’t true. Referees don’t cheat. Nor should they be subjected to abuse.
But the truth is that the standard is terrible. Why? Because they are coached to manage the game, not officiate it.
My family, and every other family who pays $120 to sit on cold hills, continue to suffer from watching an officiating standard which is declining due to years of neglect, over coaching and the failure to hold those administrators at the top accountable.
The NRL can keep punishing players and fining coaches to make them shut up, but when fans turn away because they are sick of games being ruined or mis”managed” by the poor officiating, there will be no recourse available to the NRL that will stop it.
Eventually the mismanagement of the entire refereeing system is going to hurt the NRL badly, and trying to cover it up or talk their way around the problem won’t solve it or make it go away.
Finally, a comment on the Eels performance against the Tigers.
Whilst Parra was not great, there was one thing that really impressed me.
Celebration time
At 12-0 Parra had a choice to make. Bad calls went against them and the pressure was on. But, they held their nerve and apart from a poor goal line drop out and a poorly timed pass, Parra stuck to the game plan and got the victory.
We won’t remember this game come the finals but those two points just might be the difference between gaining a home finals game or not.
Everything was there for Parra to lose that game; slippery conditions, poor officiating, a fired up opposition and a hostile crowd, yet the players held their nerve.
And as a Tigers supporter desperate for a win aptly reminded me, any victory is something worth celebrating.
Bang on as always
The standard of refereeing’s at an all time low.
And it’s not their fault.
Ridiculous the game has one set of rules inside the 20 and different ones outside.
Keep it simple don’t complicate
Every ref has to deal w voices inside their head; not theirs but voices from the bunker
In every game there’s sliding door moments when a fair try’s disallowed that infuriates the fans.
Imagine how the players must feel busting their arse to win only to be denied a fair try for their efforts.
That call has such a profound impact on the team denied and the game.
Not good enough
I don’t hold the refs accountable. I do hold the NRL accountable.
We don’t need more on more rules we need less to simplify the rules.
You corporate types justifying your gig?
You’re destroying the game and losing us the fans.
As for the standard of refereeing on the Tigers Eels match?
Whoever you were you were god awful
I am close to someone who was successfully working his way up the junior reffing ladder. He stepped away due to other career commitments. He recently had the opportunity to go back but chose not to due to the obvious favouritism that goes on even at that level. With that setting the standards good ref’s or potentially good ref’s are going to go by the wayside because if they aren’t in the boys club they aren’t going anywhere unfortunately.
Agreed, M Ceccin was superb and should have gone on longer..it seemed he was not a fav anymore.
Tks Shelley. One very annoying aspect is the bunker has sophisticated technology and still is all over the place with both what they actually see and interpretation.A couple of examples, the Penisini disallowed try, surely the bunker should over rule on that. That’s the ‘clanger’ they’re trying to eliminate. I’m sure the bunker called Nathan Brown’s high shot, the angle replay we saw was directly behind him as if we were going into the contact with him, there was absolutely no contact with the head, at worst his arm glanced upwards to the top of the chest. I can only assume they considered it dangerous as he had just been pinged for a soft facial, like ‘let’s cool this madman down, he’s out of control and dangerous’. If that’s the go, they should take a look at a few players such as Zac Lomax who is going to injure someone badly with his body slams executed as an extra effort, or maybe even Jerome Luai for his off the ball infringements.
Get rid of the 6 again and the bunker would be a start. The 6 again is a bane on the game. The bunker gets it wrong way too many times to be a thing. What happened to the benefit of doubt?
V’landys saying that we now have more refs as touchies and that makes it better officiating is totally ridiculous. Touch judges have always previously been specialists. Refs are not touchies, and when they are appointed to be touchies, they view things differently, as though they are reffing the game. That’s NOT their job. This has increased, not decreased, the number of errors being made. The number of wrong calls on easy-to-rule “forward” passes is so frustrating. Then all we hear is “everyone makes mistakes”. What gets me is that an NRL ref or touchie is there because they are of NRL standard. But are they performing as such?