Wayne Bennett has unloaded on the overall unfairness in the standard of NRL refereeing and the Bunker, while calling for a dramatic overhaul on punishment for foul play, including a major revamp of the sin bin and send-off rules.
The Dolphins super coach says his frustrations about the standard of officiating has been growing for some time.
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But he decided to speak out publicly because he says the current system is not getting better -and is having too big an impact on too many games.
“If I was a punter I couldn’t bet a penny on rugby league at the moment,” the game’s greatest coach said in an exclusive interview with foxsports.com.au.
“Do I need the grief this will cause? No, I don’t.
“But I have to stand up for the players and the game I have spent my whole life being a part of and loving.
“We can’t hide and pretend it is not a problem because it is a problem.
“And it is causing massive frustration, not just with the players and coaches, but the fans.
“People always go on about consistency.
“I know how hard consistency is.
“What I want is fairness for every team.
“I want to know we are all getting a fair shake out there.”
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FOUL PLAY PUNISHMENT A LOTTERY
Every game it seems has different rule interpretations for illegal high contact.
One game you see a player sin binned for a high shot that wouldn’t bruise a grape.
Then the following game someone gets clocked good and proper and it doesn’t so much as warrant a penalty.
“I will give you an example,” Bennett continued.
“I have had four players in the last two weeks hit with contact to the head by the opposition illegally.
“Not one penalty in those four times.
“But I have had two of these players taken out of the game on the advice of the independent doctor, who believed that they were concussed and so they were out of the game for 15 minutes.
“So the doctor, who is the expert, believed they were concussed.
“Yet the referee accused one of the players (Herbie Farnworth) that he was milking it.
“Who is the expert here? The referee, the guy in the Bunker, or the doctor?
“If the doctor believes he has been concussed, how can we leave it up to the referee or Bunker to argue that?
“That is part of the frustration.
“Then in Wednesday night’s State of Origin there were two penalties for high tackles. The players affected didn’t go to ground, nor were they called from the field for a HIA.
“So this is where I get confused because in a game played five days before you can’t get a penalty for illegal contact to the head. “And five days later under the same set of rules they get penalties and the game goes on.”
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SO HOW DO WE FIX IT?
“I will go back to my original point,” Bennett said.
“If someone is hit in the head, unless it is clearly accidental, then that should be a penalty.
“What they do after that (in respect to possible suspensions) is their prerogative.
“But there is a duty of care the game has to its players.
“Have they met some of that? Of course they have.
“But typical of these people is that they continue to put band aids on situations rather than make the hard decision and getting us all to fall in line with it.”
Bennett says it’s a similar scenario with punishment dished out for players running in to spark a melee.
“In our game (against the Storm) there is a melee when Tevita Pangia did that good tackle,” Bennett explained.
“He was offside but it was not an illegal tackle.
“And yet a player from the other team raced in and started a melee. Even though we didn’t start the melee, no action. No penalty. No sin bin.
“Then you can go back to Origin on Wednesday night, and it was a great example of the frustration I am getting at.
“There was a melee in the second half and the referee takes no action. But he said, ‘If it happens again I will take action’.
“Sure enough it happened again and he took action.
“My point here is if he took action in the first place and didn’t put the band aid on there wouldn’t have been a second melee.
“Anyone who thinks the melee is a good look for the game is kidding themselves.
“So why do we put up with it?”
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BAN THE BIN AND ALLOW A SEND OFF REPLACEMENT
Bennett wants to go two giant steps further by abolishing the sin bin for anything other than professional fouls, while revamping the send-off rule so teams get a replacement player after 10 minutes.
He says the send-off should also cost the offending team three interchanges while the offending player should not return to the game.
“We can’t get the sin bin right because of all the different variations and interpretations,” he said.
“We played this game for 90-odd years without a sin bin.
“So let’s just keep it simple and stick to the professional fouls for sin bins, and then let the match review committee take control of the grading and suspensions.”
“And now to the send-off.
“If you go back to the send-off in the first State of Origin, this is what the game has to look at.
“What I am saying is the decision (to send off Joseph Suaalii) was right. 100 per cent.
“But we have no comeback when it leaves one team with 12 men and the game is done.
“The send-off was created in 1908.
“There were T Model Fords in 1908.
“We still have cars today. But, geez, the cars have changed enormously.
“Yet we still have the same send-off.
“We are asking fans to pay $300 to go to a State of Origin game.
“If I am paying $300 and I am going to take my family and it costs well over $1000, and I know the game is over in 7 minutes, we have got to be better than that.
“It is a discussion we need to have.
“I am not trying to belt anyone up.
“I just want to be constructive.
“I want to be honest and tell what is really happening out there.
“The kickback is always that you have to send players off or otherwise they will be doing this or doing that (to illegally rub out the best players).
“But the AFL have never sent a player off in their history.
“They have had tough men. They have great players. They have all survived with no sent off players.
“Am I saying we do that, not necessarily.
“But we have to look at what we can do. And don’t use the excuse they will just be taking out the best players.
“There were times in our game when players got rubbed out for two years (for foul play) because the game was brutal on foul play.
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“The bosses at the time brought Jim Comans in to clean up the game and there is still nothing to stop us doing that.
“High profile players have always been targeted. The great Wally Lewis. Allan Langers. Andrew Johns. Brad Fittlers.
“You don’t think they were singled out as well?
“But the answer is heavier penalties post-match. We need to have a mature discussion about the send-off and the sin bin.
“I have not spoken to other coaches about this, but I am sure they would share the same frustrations.
“It is a great competition.
“The salary cap is working.
“It is also why it is so important to get the officiating right.
“I have no doubt they are saying to themselves in there at the NRL, ‘Here comes Bennett again, whinging’.
“But no one rings me up from the NRL.
“Nobody says to me that ‘we have reviewed the performance of the referee and Bunker and it wasn’t where it should be’.
“I have got to question them.
“They have a responsibility much greater than not to be having a whinge about me because I am unhappy or disappointed about the way a game was officiated.
“But I am the bad guy because I am making a complaint.
“I make the complaint because I care about my players.
“I don’t want to see them get hit in the head illegally, we all understand the consequences of that. The head is a no-go zone.
“I don’t want my players copping poor decisions.
“I owe it to them.
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“I ask them to go out there and play to the rules and we judge them on their performance.
“And I feel like I have let them down if I don’t question when I know the decisions are wrong.
“In our last game they got four decisions wrong which they admit to, and we should have got four penalties. We got none.
“Am I saying drop the ref? No, I am not.
“We have players that have bad games.
“But we have to be better.
“Everyone thought the Bunker was going to be the saviour of the game.
“The Bunker has made it worse because they have hindsight and time on their hands, and they still can’t get it right.
“I think the answer is more accountability, better training for the Bunker, and less people in the referee’s ears when he is referring the game.
“Because right now he has a coach, two sideline officials and a Bunker person who have access to him.
“I couldn’t imagine sending my player into a game with all that information being fed to him why he is trying to do his job.
“Am I against talking to the referee? No, I am not.
“But it should only be in a break of play and the referees’ coach should have the same rule on him as we do on our players.
“A message can be taken out in a break of play and then we all move on.
“We can’t just sit back and continue to let this happen.
“It’s not just me disgruntled by this.
“It is other coaches, players and most importantly the fans who pay their hard-earned money to support our game.
“We can’t just continue to fob it off and say, ‘He is whinging again’. And we can’t say the fans are whingers too.”