Captain's Challenge is stupid

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Last weekend during the All Stars game, the NRL trialled a new rule called the Captains Challenge, whereby a team could choose to challenge a referee's decision.

Each side would be limited to one incorrect decision each.

To the ardent fans who are sucked in by the persistent berating of match officials by the media, this comes across as great idea.

However I assure you, it's anything but.

The game has changed many rules in the past for player safety - from the NRL all the way down to primary schoolers. A lot of those changes are common sense and smart, despite the droning discontent amongst the dinosaurs who claim that every small tweak towards safety is "killing Rugby League."

The Captains Challenge though? It's bad. Firstly, it gives kids the impression that referees can be argued with. This alone is a major reason why it should be scrapped.

Another huge reason? Our friends in cricket have shown us that the Review system is heavily flawed and consistently makes mistakes itself. In short - bringing in a flawed system to officiating is destined to make a referee's job even harder than it already is.

Some may argue that the Captain's Challenge will once and for all rule out any talk among fans that the games are rigged. My response to that is this - any person who genuinely believes that NRL referees are rigging games, are the sort of people we should be ignoring entirely.

A lot of these dinosaurs also harp on about rugby league ‘back in the good ol' days'. Back then, referees had no technology to assist them. They made calls on the fly and the game moved on. They made as many mistakes, if not more, than the current match officials. They also sent off players immensely more frequently, used the sin bin far more often too and regularly made mistakes that cost teams games.

And the game never died.

This obsession with getting ref decisions perfect is absurd and destructive. It's not in the best interests of the game. This discussion is solely done to provide content for the mainstream media when there's nothing else to deride the game over.

It's about time everyone stopped buying into this ref-bashing bullshit, grow up and realise that mistakes happen. We all accept mistakes from our teams and players, but apparently referees are not allowed to make an error. What a load of garbage.

Captain's Challenge only serves to diminish what authority on-field officials have left. We shouldn't be taking authority away from referees as it will only make their jobs harder.

Scrap captain's challenge for good and any other variants of it that are proposed by some of the clowns in the media