Does The NRL Need More Field Referees?
I enjoyed the state of origin match last night, I muted the television and listened to the coverage on 2CC with Andrew Moore, Steve Roach, Daryl Brohman and Tony Megahey, which was quite excellent as usual. The match was brilliant, although it did have a few contentious referee decisions, although it is hard to think of a single NRL match that doesn’t have a contentious decision these days.
The one thing that I’ve been thinking about for a while which I think needs improvement in the NRL, (and I raised this with Andrew and Steve after the match) is that the “modern” game is too fast for one referee. Personally I think we need two referees, one ahead of the play (much like what we have now) watching general play, and another in closer watching the play-the-ball incidents and the other little things that the main ref seems to often miss.
Steve didn’t seem to think that would work as the close ref would get in the way of play, and he is probably right, but we eventually agreed on giving back some power to the touch judges, who used to fill the role of “close ref” before the video referee came in. In my view this would be a good idea, and would improve the game as it would be cleaner, and there would be less controversy. I would give the touch judges the power to pull up play when there is a forward pass or play the ball error (how long has it been since you’ve seen somebody use their feet in the play-the-ball? It’s rare…very rare) or some other problem which needs to be pulled up.
So what do you think?
Samuel
6 comments May 25th, 2006 at 12:35pm
