Band-Aids Don’t Fix Loopholes

“I don’t like it either and it is a loophole within the rules system that the commission needs to fix and they need to fix it before next weekend.”

- Cooper Cronk, after Titans vs. Eels

Another week in rugby league, another controversy. God bless this stupid sport. So what catastrophic plague is out to kill our game this week?

checks notes

The captain’s challenge? One of the Commission’s fandangled new shiny toys? Are you sure?

For those of you who somehow missed this carnage on Saturday night, there were several instances of a call the Gold Coast Titans feel was missed in their favour, such as a Parramatta knock on. So what did they do? They laid in the ruck, deliberately gave away a penalty, and then instituted their captain’s challenge to review the play prior.

They were right. Every single time.

So what’s the issue? Well apparently it’s a bad look for the game to give away deliberate penalties to challenge. But my issues go way beyond that.

Before I go any further, some people want the sin bin to be a threat for a cynical penalty to challenge a missed call if the challenge is unsuccessful. You know what a penalty is for an unsuccessful challenge? A penalty. A penalty is a penalty, shocking I know. Not only do you surrender a free 20-30 metres of territory, you also lose the ability to challenge again. That seems pretty steep already, and not a risk-reward balance I’d generally advocate for if I was a risk professional (I’m not).

Firstly, going back to Cronk’s original quote, asking the Commission to fix something in the game is just asking for trouble. We’ve seen the constant tinkering that the current administration has done, and what have we got? Well just a year so statistically outrageous it makes Andrew Johns look like Luke Brooks, but I digress. If you missed my piece last week on the state of the game you can read it here.

Rugby league nowadays seems addicted to quick fixes. Constant adjusting and tampering until we find a balance, except this mystical balance doesn’t actually exist, and these reflex changes cause far more problems than they solve.

Let’s take a look at the issue in isolation though. Deliberately giving away a penalty to challenge a play. On the face of it, not ideal, no? But my issue is far more geared towards administration than players.

For starters, how is the challenge implemented? There was a game earlier in the season, I forget which, forgive me, where a team deliberately gave away a penalty to challenge. The referee warned the team that if it was unsuccessful they would be sin binned. They ultimately didn’t challenge.

A couple of weekends ago, Rabbitohs vs. Panthers. The Rabbitohs give away a penalty to challenge a missed Penrith knock on. The challenge is successful, and Souths get possession.

Not 24 hours later, the Broncos try the same thing against the Warriors. Only, they’re told it isn’t part of the same play and therefore not able to be challenged, despite the framework being identical to the previous night’s incident.

And thus we arrive to Saturday night’s Eels vs. Titans clash, where this loophole was exploited several times by the Gold Coast, all successfully.

A lot of the discourse surrounding this loophole is that it’s bad luck and because there was no natural stoppage in the play, the team just has to live with the referee’s call. So…we have this mechanism that allows us to get more correct decisions, but we’re not meant to use it? Is that what the argument is?

“Well the referees have been missing more calls this year, they need to be better.” Look, I’m no referee sympathiser, but this constant shifting of the goalposts is rapidly turning me into one. If you look at how the roles of all of rugby league’s major stakeholders have changed over the course of the last 2-3 years, it’s fair to argue that no one’s role has shifted quite as dramatically as the referees.

The dual-referee system was abolished during the hiatus while the league was shutdown over the initial COVID-19 outbreak back in 2020, trumpeted as a cost-saving measure in a year of financial hardships and to ensure the game could resume as soon as possible. Understandably, the Professional Rugby League Match Officials (PRLMO) weren’t happy with their job allocation being shorn in half, and raised a dispute with Fair Work Australia.

Imagine you walked into work one day and learned half your team just got sacked and your workload had doubled. Would you be happy? I’m going to take a wild swing at no, no you would not.

But why the haste to cut half the match officials jobs? Well, cost saving was one excuse offered up, but take a read of some quotes from prominent stakeholders.

Firstly, then Queensland Origin coach Kevin Walters.

“We got some better decisions on different occasions (with two referees) but it didn't dramatically change the way the game was played.”

“[The game worked] beautifully for 100 years.”

- Kevin Walters

If there were more correct decisions with two refs while the game didn’t dramatically change, what was the issue then Kev? By that logic, we should return to unlimited tackles, because a tackle limit was only implemented in the 1967 NSWRFL season? In fact, it was only four tackles as well, with the six tackle set not introduced until 1971. And the zero tackle after an error? That was a Super League innovation, in 1997.

Why not, the game worked beautifully for 60 years prior, because people didn’t know any better.

“When I became chairman, I said I would listen to the fans.”

- Peter V’Landys

In isolation, the quote is mere lip service for a new admin finding his feet. But remember the “fans survey” that was paraded around in 2020, under the guise of making the games “more unpredictable and entertaining”? Well, according to the whopping 18,000 people that responded to that survey, the second most requested change was one referee returning.

Maybe I’ve misread the situation, but I don’t necessarily want the future of the game decided by the whims of those few thousand punters who can be bothered filling in an online survey, or who are indeed so disenfranchised that they’ll take the time to point out every personal gripe they have with the game.

You know what? I’ve always personally wanted more howlers and terrible decisions missed because the one referee can only see so much. Sure, my team might be hosed on a few occasions, but just think of the unpredictability! That’s what makes our game great I say.

The captain’s challenge, I think, has been a generally fair introduction to the game, even if the challenge system is generally accompanied by a certain degree of pride and hubris at match officials refusing to admit they got a call wrong. That’s human nature, whatever, and it happens in all sports with challenges requiring human input.

But this ridiculous notion that it’s an unsightly blight on the game for teams to exploit a mechanism available to them is utterly ridiculous.

Maybe, instead of expecting officials to deal with a spectre of swirling rules that can change at any given time, we should go back to the two-referee system? Imagine if we had a specialised referee whose entire job was to patrol the ruck and spot bobbles and miscues a referee 15 metres away in the defensive line might not spot. Wouldn’t that be neat? Then the challenge could be saved for the true howlers it was designed for.

Oh, and in closing, remember those “cost cutting measures” that the Commission was hiding behind when making the decision to get rid of the second referee?

In 2020, if you believe PVL, rugby league’s revenue was $419.7m. At least that’s where my basic maths have led me, because the reported revenue after the 2021 season was $575.1m, an increase of $155.4m, or 37%, from the 2020 figure. Adding to that, of that $575.1m, $43.1m of that was, wait for it, a surplus.

A profit? In this economy? Localised entirely within your administration? Can I see it?