NRL referee Gerard Sutton’s run of 15 straight State of Origin games may be under threat after a horror display in Auckland on Saturday.
The governing body on Monday revealed Penrith forward Liam Martin returned from the sin bin up to 100 seconds too early during their win over the Warriors.
The Panthers were down to 11 men when Jarome Luai joined Martin in the bin, only for the latter to come back earlier than he should have.
NRL head of football Graham Annesley admitted being unable to determine exactly how early Martin returned because of a lack of access to the sin bin clock.
“My best estimate is somewhere between 1.30 and 1.40 (minutes), that he returned to the field too early,” Annesley said on Monday.
“It was not a system error. The technology was working perfectly. It was a human error where he was allowed to go on earlier.
“The ground manager became aware of the situation after he’d returned to the field (but) there was no action taken to bring him back off the field.”
The incident book-ended a horror ten minutes of decision-making, which included Luai being incorrectly sin-binned in the first place and the Warriors wrongly awarded a try soon after.
Annesley confirmed Warriors captain Roger Tuivasa-Sheck committed a knock-on before Luai was ruled to have committed a professional foul.
Moments after Luai’s dismissal, Warriors winger David Fusitu’a was awarded a try by the bunker despite replays showing his hand planted outside the field of play.
The senior review official for the NRL fixture was Jared Maxwell, who has also been in the bunker for both Origin games so far this year.
Annesley said all errors would factor into his decision on who officiates the Origin decider in Sydney on July 10, which will be announced on Tuesday.
“I can’t say to you that any one of these decisions would mean that a particular official would or would not get an Origin nod,” Annesley said.
“We have to look back at how they’ve performed in recent weeks and back throughout the season, and what’s happened in Origin I and II.
“We had the same set of officials go into Origin I as we did in Origin II.
“Thankfully those games were relatively controversy-free and I think everyone wants to see next Wednesday night as controversy-free as possible.”
Annesley also declined to comment on why George Burgess wasn’t binned for an alleged eye gouge because the case is now in front of the judiciary.
“But suffice to say that I started today’s briefing by saying there were some things that were pretty sloppy I thought, right across the course of the weekend,” he said.
Annesley also said referees missed a Clint Gutherson knock-on leading up to a crucial Parramatta try in their six-point win over Canberra.
Cronulla five-eighth Shaun Johnson was also given a try by the bunker despite a Briton Nikora knock-on in their close loss to Canterbury.
