The Halftime Spray - Round 21

Every week fans, officials and players have some gripe with the quality of the match officiating and some of the decisions made. A lot of these are 50/50 calls and people eventually accept them and move on.

But what people cannot, will not and should not accept is ANY error made courtesy of the video referee.

The game is stopped, they have several camera angles at their disposal and the ability to slow play down to a frame-by-frame speed. Furthermore, there are two of them to adjudicate on the decision.

Yet they still make mistakes and this is something that should not be tolerated, when all avenues to make a mistake have been closed off due to the technology.

I am personally getting sick and tired of hearing the referee's boss come out and state that "so and so referee has clearly got that decision wrong."

We know they got it wrong!

How did they get employed if they can make a blatant error that everyone can see?

Furthermore, how do they remain employed after such a mistake?

It's high time that the referee's boss stopped telling us that the ref's made mistakes and set about ensuring they don't do it again.

On-field referee's deserve and receive some leniency on their calls, as they are not privy to several camera angles and opportunities to watch an incident again and again. However they do get the opportunity to send a decision upstairs on possible tries being scored.

A few weeks ago Wests Tigers winger David Nofoaluma appeared to have scored a try against Manly, but the on field referee Shayne Hayne declared it wasn't a try and refused to let the video referee look at it. The replays confirmed that it indeed was a try. Within a minute, Manly travelled the length of the field and scored - and the momentum of the match swung completely the other way.

All people want is consistency. We got used to every try being sent upstairs and learned to live with it. But for some unknown reason, Shayne Hayne chose to bypass this strategy, which is a greater concern than his ‘no try' ruling.

If the on-field referees can't be consistent in how they adjudicate, what chance have the players got of having any respect for them?

If the video referees can't be consistent in how they adjudicate, what chance have the on-field referee's got of having any respect for them?

It's a sad state of affairs when the only decision from any match official that we can completely agree with, is from the referee's boss when he says of the match adjudicators, ‘they got it wrong.'