Titans coach Des Hasler is of the belief that there is plenty of “nervousness” and “confusion” among the NRL refereeing ranks following a drama-filled Round 25.
Following the Titans’ 48-22 loss to the Roosters, Hasler shared his opinion on the state of officiating in the game, specifically over the inconsistency of the policing of high tackles.
“There was something like 18 penalties today. There’s not a lot of confidence at the moment with players and their interpretation around what’s a high shot and what isn’t,” Hasler said.
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“There are a lot of nervous individuals at the moment you can kind of see it with the officialdom.
“Who’s running the officials? The officials are down on confidence at the moment and it’s something we have to address pretty quickly heading into finals.”
On Friday night, Bulldogs skipper Stephen Crichton escaped a sin bin despite a clear high shot on Roger Tuivasa-Sheck.
Crichton’s shoulder collected Tuivasa-Sheck in the head, forcing the Warriors veteran from the field with a concussion.
Crichton was later hit with a grade two careless high tackle charge by the NRL
The controversial call came just 24 hours after three Manly players were softly binned against the Tigers on Thursday night when the Bunker took a completely different approach to headhigh contact.
During his officiating spiel, Hasler raised another incident involving Souths star Cam Murray.
The Rabbitohs skipper was initially only penalised for a clear high shot on Newcastle’s Tyson Frizell before the Bunker got in the ear of referee Chris Butler to advise he should be giving Murray his marching orders.
“I’ve got every confidence in (ARLC Chairman) Peter (V’landys) and (NRL CEO) Andrew (Abdo), but it’s something we need to address as there’s a lot of confusion,” Hasler said.
“We need to be really confident about that part of the game because there were a lot of penalties today and a lot of players put on report.
“Anyway that’s my piece. We’ll see where it goes.”
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Hasler didn’t blame the officiating for his side’s loss, even stating at the top of the press conference that he was “sick of making excuses” for the Titans’ recent form of fading out in games.
Against the Roosters, it was 10-10 late in the first half before the Tricolours turned it on.
Hasler was in a very testy mood to open the presser, clearly frustrated with what he just witnessed.
“What happened? That’s what you want to ask, what happened?” Hasler said.
“Ah yeah, in it for a while, but just got away. I’m kind of sick of making excuses to be honest.
“We didn’t have the best of starts, but we climbed back into the game… It was 10-10 with nine minutes to go in the first half but then we let in three soft tries.
“We know we aren’t managing the game well enough… We just have to be better.”
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