Refs are there to keep the game fair, not show that they have no life and memorized every rule in the book.
At what point did the Titans gain an UNFAIR advantage from what Mino did? They didnt!
The first penalty was a joke also, Lafarncri was behind the play the ball, and gave the attacking team over 20 meters space. That shouldnt have been a penalty, and also the BS penalty that he awarded us for striking in a scrum, wtf was that?
Harrigan has targeted teams that play with speed this year (Canberra, Titans, Roosters, Tigers) They have a checklist before each game ours would look like this.
Minochello - play off the mark, Foot on ball, loose Carrys
LaFrancri - Hands on ball in tackle
Bird - Play off mark, Foot on Ball, Loose Carrys
Henderson - Loose Carrys
WHOLE TEAM- Speed in Ruck with ball, tries to slow down ruck without ball.
As much as Harrigan has done his best to kill us this year, we have to admit our team is too stupid to learn to eliminate the problems we have in these areas after 19 weeks.
One particular that pissed me right off was Minicheillo play the ball penalty. He's made the effort to place his foot on the ball, which is my understanding as to how it's reffed, and he's maintained control of the ball, and performed a reasonably tidy play the ball, certainly acceptable.
Now he gets pinged, Titans go from having some decent go-forward, to being pinned on their line, and costing us 6 points for it.
Such a dire, dire call.
That said, when Dugan got his awesome knock-on/First try against the Tigers earlier in the year (the hillariously terrible decision one), i had money on Dugan for First try scorer, so i wasn't too mad
Mark Minichiello ---> Team Italy
I was watching the replay of mini's play the ball at the game the other night and from what I saw there was nothing wrong with it. I swear we are the only team to be penalised with the ball every single week I'm gonna go as far as to say that poor ref decisions are the reason we sit at the foot of the ladder. Sure we haven't played well, we struggle in attack and defense so on and so forth, but earlier in the season we were playing a lot better in games against top 8 sides, but of course poor momentum and confidence killing ref calls, such as Boyd's try in round 1 and shackleton's try that lost us the game to the eels (Burt was offside from the kick and got a hand to the ball before it was grounded) Harrison getting penalised for not playing the ball straight, the in the ensuing set from the penalty, a manly player does the same thing, gets away with it and scores the four points which ends up as the margin, plus in that same game, a manly knock on is actually called as a penalty against Bull cos apparently he made the tackle before they got the ball, when replays show it was borderline David Mead gets tackled head high, in the air, lands on his face, without even having the ball, the sharks player who did that should have been put on report, but of course no penalty is called, and the sharks score in the next set, surprise , surprise but the media doesn't even care about us there wont be any ref bashing in the press if they screw us over. God forbid manly has a call go against them, that is big news and Hasler makes sure of that. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that poor decisions early in the year has killed our confidence, and broken our spirits late in the year.
Seen a few things already in this Melbourne - Broncos game that I've no doubt the Titans would have been penalised for.
- Walking of the mark
- Blocking on a bomb, forward passes from Dummy half.
Anyway it is what it is some teams are refs darlings others are not.
Another poor (wrong!) decision changes the outcome of a game. We might well think it's a stroke of good luck, but the Roosters were denied a try based in a legitimate pass that was incorrectly ruled forward.
I reckon I see about 1 forward pass from dummy half almost every set, and I'd say i see at least 3 or 4 in any given game, that are let go.
Then, when someone throws something different, albeit backwards, it's ruled forward for no other reason that it was thrown overhand.
As a result, the Roosters lost. There fans should be filthy.
I can honestly say I've had a gutfull. I doubt there is another professional sport in the World that has this much incompetence in applying the rules properly and correctly. Its a disgrace!
Nope, even with all the automated timing devices, and over 100 cameras recording a multitude of angles, that they can review at their will. They still manage to stuff up grid positions from time to time.
But all that aside, I do understand where you're coming from. Just pointing out that Rugby League isn't the only professional sport that suffers terribly with poor decisions from officials. Weather they be on the ground or from the highest position within the sport being mentioned.
With regards to forward passes, the referees either need to take a stance that the pass needs to be CLEARLY forward to be called forward, or the pass needs to be CLEARLY backwards to be deemed a legal pass. Also referees standing perpendicular to the pass 10 metres back shouldn't be ruling on passes. That is a job for the sideline officials.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Well I cannot for the life of me see how they could award that cowboys try, even though the replay clearly shows tate knock the ball forward out of Michaels grasp. Also the Cowboys fourth try came off two passes that were more forward than Prince's pass to Mini when we played the Dragons