NRL head of football Graham Annesley has all but confirmed that Bunker official Liam Kennedy will be stood down this week following his baffling decision to not send Bulldogs skipper Stephen Crichton to the sin bin for a tackle that will now rub him out for one game.
Annesley described the missed call as a “judgment error” after Crichton was allowed to stay on the field despite collecting Roger Tuivasa-Sheck in the head and knocking him out of the contest.
The one missed call sparked a weekend of hysteria every time someone was penalised or sin binned for high contact, with Annesley unable to comment on Cameron Murray’s high shot on Tyson Frizell because the Souths skipper is seeking a downgrade in a bid to avoid a season-ending ban.
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“We have listened to the audio, and it’s purely a judgment error,” Annesley explained.
“The Bunker official involved just didn’t give due consideration to the impact of the tackle.
“They have criteria that they look at, but they have to make an assessment of how serious that particular incident was.
“It was purely a poor judgment call. A lot of time and effort goes into getting the referees and the match review committee on the same page with these things.
“Sometimes people’s judgment lets them down, and that’s what happened in this case.
“We haven’t done appointments yet, but you can probably gauge from my comments that it was a serious error.”
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The Crichton incident was one of a season-high 30 penalties for high contact that continues a worrying trend in recent weeks.
The average had hovered around 15 for most of the year, with no more than 17 in a round until a few weeks ago. That number rocketed to 27, 27 and 30 in the past three rounds.
Of those 30 penalties, 10 were charged by the match review committee, six were sin binned, five of those offences attracted grade 2 charges, and of those five, everyone but Crichton was marched for 10 minutes.
Overall this season, 18 of the 23 players who received grade 2 or 3 charges for high contact were either sent to the sin bin or sent off, which shows referees and the MRC are usually on the same page but still not at the desired level.
“We would like this (number) to be higher, 80 per cent is not good enough,” Annesley said.
“We need to be getting much closer to a perfect score here about having tackles that are considered to be the more serious types of tackles by the match review committee that result in a grade 2 or 3 charge, that they are sin binned or sent off.
“Eighty per cent does give you an indication that across the course of the season, the referees have been reasonably consistent with this.
“Because we have been reasonably consistent with this, it in some ways leads to the commentary we’ve had over the weekend where we’ve almost conditioned everyone to recognise what results in a sin bin or a send off, so when it doesn’t happen, everyone is up in arms.
“That can only happen if they’re getting most of them right, and they are, but it’s not good enough to get one wrong in any round of football because they should be getting them right.”
Annesley said he was comfortable with the decision to sin bin several Manly players on Thursday night, while he also gave the green light to Sua Fa’alogo’s try for the Storm that looked like he grounded the Steeden on the dead-ball line.
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