NRL head of football Graham Annesley admits some of the mistakes being made by the game’s referees just isn’t “good enough”, but has ruled out mass sackings.
Annesley met with the referees on Monday after admitting four costly mistakes led to tries, or robbed teams of crucial four-pointers, in round 16.
A week after describing their round 15 efforts as “sloppy”, Annesley doubled down on Monday by again calling out the officials for their sub-par performances.
“I do want to talk particularly to their coaching staff about a range of things we’ve seen over the last two weeks that just aren’t good enough,” Annesley said.
“I want to make sure they’re undertaking the necessary steps to put the referees in the best possible position post-Origin leading into the finals series.”
Annesley, who has only met with the referees a couple of times this season, said preventing human errors was impossible.
“But some of the mistakes we’ve seen over the last few weeks simply aren’t good enough. They’re mistakes that shouldn’t have been made,” he said.
“We need to try and find out why and what they’re doing to hopefully ensure it doesn’t happen again leading into the finals series.”
Annesley also said the whisteblowers should’ve called time off when Warriors centre Peta Hiku was concussed a play before the Knights scored on Saturday.
Annesley also admitted referee Gavin Badger incorrectly told Warriors captain Roger Tuivasa-Sheck that is was up to trainers to inform them off hurt players.
Badger was dropped earlier this season after failing to stop play when former North Queensland winger Nene Macdonald had a fractured ankle.
Replays showed Badger was aware Hiku was on the ground.
“He said, ‘Watch him’. In other words, keep an eye on him,” Annesley said.
“But that’s not good enough. That’s saying, ‘I’ve identified that there’s an issue there, but let’s just keep an eye on it’.
“Keep an eye on him is not the right answer. Stop the game and have him assessed is the right answer.”
However Annesley said continuing to drop referees, particularly their most experienced men, isn’t the answer.
“We would actually be worse off if we drop them because we don’t have better referees to replace them,” he said.
“We’d be weakening our officiating at the NRL if we were to do that in some cases. And then we create more problems.”
NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg said he couldn’t just shrug off the increase in bunker blunders, and that his team of video officials simply need to be better.
“There have been some errors our match officials have made – I can’t sugar-coat it,” Greenberg said in Melbourne.
“We don’t want to see errors but in saying that we are dealing with human beings so errors will happen from time to time.
“But one error is too many.”