NRL admits bunker mistake

*WARNING! MAJOR RANT BELOW! *

Thanks very much for posting that. It's great to get different views and opinions and look at them objectively.

He's compiled a comprehensive, 'matter of fact' style, article that shows why he has the view he does.

I disagree.

Journalist or not, he is still a person writing about what he thinks. And so are we.

I could definitely give him a run for his money when it comes to banging on about something I'm passionate about (I'm sure a lot of you are aware of this by now! Sorry... 😔), so I will respond to the point quoted that stood out to me and give it a good try:

"Examples of rugby league decisions being judicially reviewed are virtually non-existent."

To which I posit this:

Yes, taking sporting disputes to state or federal court - to my knowledge this is true.

However.

What happens when a player is put on report for say, a hip drop tackle, or swearing and abusing a referee?

They are put on report and sent to "the judiciary".

Never been there, but my guess is that on the Monday or Tuesday (day/s after the event, mind) the player is sent to the NRL's offices, stands in a room next to his representative, and the actions of his reported indiscretion are then thoroughly examined using all available audiovisual data - numerous cameras and angles, slow motion, however many microphones... You get the drift.

The player's representative is there to try to convince the panel of 'adjudicators' he was wrongly charged.

Sometimes they're successful. Most times they are aren't, and on top of that, for having the gall to challenge the referee's on field ruling, they are dealt a harsher penalty than if they had just accepted the ban and stayed home.

Now call me crazy, but to me this kind of reminds me of a court (which, unfortunately, I have been in, but we won't go into that! 🤣).

The NRL is the de facto supreme court of its own competition.

They are a law unto themselves and this is just another example in a history rife with hypocrisy and double standards.

So we have two hypotheticals:

Case 1
A referee makes a decision on field and puts a player on report. After a delay of 1,2... however many days after the fact, it is then examined and the player has the right to representation and the chance to be found innocent and incorrectly charged.


Case 2
A referee doesn't make an on field decision, is contacted by the person in the bunker about something (not in the rules btw...), ignores the captain from team A trying to make a challenge (not in the rules btw...) clearly heard on TV coverage saying "it's been cleared" when there is no possible way it could have been (unless Klein is a blind man with a Delorean...not sure if this is in the rules tbh), accepts a challenge from the captain of team B (thereby challenging the decision he has not made - not in the rules btw... ), the bunker awards a penalty to team B - that even the NRL said was the wrong decision - completely missing the fact that before the incident in question the player recommencing play was offside....

The result is despite all of the things that were known to have self admittedly been done wrong at that time, the tigers have absolutely ZERO recourse because referees make mistakes, what happens on the field and all that...

I don't care about bullshit soft whistles and "we messed up. Sorry champ, now off you go, Tiger 😉".

Fk that. I know the tigers will never get within a country mile of those two points, and yes I'm a tigers fan, but I can honestly say that I believe this whole situation would never have happened to the Roosters or Storm, et al.
🎯Correct. The issue Is justice. Audio , corruption and injunction, not really about 2pts anymore.
 
Last edited:

OPINION​

Following the siren song of legal action will result in more heartache for Tigers​

Darren Kane

Darren Kane

Sports Columnist
August 5, 2022 — 11.44am


It’s by equal measure both curious and entirely understandable that a fortnight later it’s still a matter of discussion whether the result of the Wests Tigers-North Queensland match might actually be overturned - whether as a result of some sort of opaque and actually non-existent adjudication and appeals process.

For it’s a defining characteristic of sport and the rules which govern all sports, that field-of-play decisions must be respected; that sports tribunals, and administrations, must not trespass upon the autonomy of match officials. Even if they royally stuff up.

The North Queensland Cowboys take on the West Tigers in round 19 of the 2022 NRL Premiership

Yet nonetheless, if I was infected by the great enthusiasm and great devotions which burden long-suffering Wests Tigers players, fans, coaches and chairpersons, I’d be abjectly filthy about, and gutted by the end result of the July 24 match. Ecstasy isn’t supposed to be followed by such blinding agony.

And on that basis alone, in actuality I’d be going right off like a frog inside a filthy orange, black and white football sock, if the match outcome mattered to me even in some obscure way. Multiple arguable mistakes, of the kind which together amounted to the match officials awarding a penalty to the Cowboys, simply shouldn’t happen.

Yet just as players routinely might err and come up short in the heat of battle, there’s also no effort without error and shortcoming, when it comes to match officials. Everyone, in all walks of professional life, makes mistakes. Sport doesn’t occur inside a vacuum.

Plenty of people can’t make decisions quickly when they get to the front of the queue at McDonald’s, let alone when actual pressure is applied. Yet listen to the rhetoric, and referees have their eyes re-painted on each Tuesday afternoon.

In 2006, the AFL decided it had the power to overturn the result of the ‘Sirengate’ Fremantle-St Kilda match, distorted by an umpire missing the final siren and permitting the game to run for another 10 seconds or thereabouts, during which short interlude more points were scored, and the lead was swapped.

In that case and at the time, the AFL’s rules relevantly provided that the match timekeepers shall sound the siren to signal the end of a quarter “until a field umpire acknowledges that the siren has been heard and brings play to an end”, and also, that play in each quarter (including the final quarter) shall come to an end when any one of the field umpires hears the signal.

The AFL’s investigations demonstrated that the timekeeper erred in only allowing the siren to sound until they witnessed players from the leading team celebrating, and not until (as was required) an umpire positively acknowledged the sounding of the siren and brought play to a final halt.
So it’s not as if there’s absolutely no precedent with the Wests Tigers having a crack. But in the AFL’s experience, reversing the match outcome caused as much consternation as doing nothing would have. And also, the AFL are a bit of a closed biosphere when it comes to these things.
Tigers chairman Lee Hagipantelis held talks with senior NRL officials on Thursday over the refereeing controversy.

Tigers chairman Lee Hagipantelis held talks with senior NRL officials on Thursday over the refereeing controversy.

However, the Wests Tigers’ case is crucially different. The NRL’s operations rules include provisions that say, categorically, that in all cases it’s the match referee who’s the sole arbiter of when play shall cease after the half-time or full-time siren sounds. The same rules, in the next paragraph, further state that the referee may extend a match to award a penalty or to complete the play currently underway, at the referee’s discretion.

Any argument that the events, which led to the Cowboys being awarded a penalty after the final whistle, somehow happened after the completion of play and in circumstances where the penalty simply couldn’t be awarded, is futile. The facts drawn from the match footage eviscerate the essence of the argument.

Wests Tigers’ contention that the match was over should garner sympathy, but it’s a losing argument. It would also create a mightily slippery slope, if match results could be overturned in such circumstances, and especially where the NRL’s rules are silent.

The short point is that the referee had quite clearly NOT decided that the match was at an end, where the referee is the sole decider of that fact.

There isn’t any right of appeal here. It would emasculate the power and authority of every rugby league official in the country, if results of this contentiousness could be simply overturned in circumstances where there is no right, power or authority to do so. For if new rules and new policy is invented ‘on the fly’ about such matters, the inevitable consequence is that it becomes the Cowboys who will then appeal. And then win.

Sports administrators and tribunals must refrain from interfering in such matters. Courts have a ridiculously limited appetite for resolving arguments rooted in disagreements about the correctness of in-play refereeing decisions. Sport requires finality, not judges holding a rulebook in one hand and a crystal ball in the other. Which makes sense - sport would be utterly unworkable otherwise.

Examples of rugby league decisions being judicially reviewed are virtually non-existent. When disputes involving other sports, such as thoroughbred racing, have wound their way into court, judges invariably give such cases short shrift. The relevant rules invariably preserve the sanctity of the umpire’s call, unless the rules of the actual sport permit otherwise.

Moreover, decisions of the Court of Arbitration for Sport are plentiful. The starting point is that in-play decisions are immune from review. CAS has refused to overturn decisions disqualifying boxers because of ‘below the belt’ punches, and officials disqualifying winning race walkers not walking properly.

CAS refused to intervene even where Olympic gymnastics judges made blatant errors calculating a competitor’s accumulated scores, because the authority of referees would be ‘fatally undermined’ if every decision was open to post-match examination.

Jurisprudence illustrates that interference by the CAS will be an open possibility only in peculiar and rare instances. If a sport’s rules demand a referee control a match in a concrete way - such as the order of play in a penalty shootout – it’s conceivable that a breach might be reviewable.

At the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City two decades ago, a South Korean speed skating case confirmed the CAS would intervene if it were proven by direct evidence that a referee’s decision was made as a manifestation of corruption or bad faith.

But such cases are almost impossible to prove. In the boxing competition at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, Roy Jones Jnr lost the gold medal bout. Months later all three judges were found to be hopelessly corrupt. By then it was too late to appeal.

Sport at its best is gloriously unscripted, uncertain and compelling. The spectacle lies in the immediacy and the uncertainty. Inherently subjective, instantaneous, line-ball judgement calls on complex rules and unclear facts will never be right all of the time. And almost always, they won’t and mustn’t be appealable.
Clearly states opinion. RUBBISH
 
Clearly states opinion. RUBBISH
Oh I think he's entirely right. Morally Tigers have a very strong case, legally we have next to nothing.

No court is interested in hearing a case about on-field decisions. It won't have any legs without some proof of fraud or malpractice.

I just want to ensure Tigers fans understand, whatever your passion about this issue, there basically no chance Tigers get the 2 premiership points back and basically no chance of this being heard in court.

Not being able to take the case to court will not be a representation of incompetence of lack of commitment on behalf of the club, and I don't want to read people complaining about Tigers weakness when no legal action is taken. The club has no options here.
 
Not being able to take the case to court will not be a representation of incompetence of lack of commitment on behalf of the club, and I don't want to read people complaining about Tigers weakness when no legal action is taken. The club has no options here.

Yep.
 
Oh I think he's entirely right. Morally Tigers have a very strong case, legally we have next to nothing.

No court is interested in hearing a case about on-field decisions. It won't have any legs without some proof of fraud or malpractice.

I just want to ensure Tigers fans understand, whatever your passion about this issue, there basically no chance Tigers get the 2 premiership points back and basically no chance of this being heard in court.

Not being able to take the case to court will not be a representation of incompetence of lack of commitment on behalf of the club, and I don't want to read people complaining about Tigers weakness when no legal action is taken. The club has no options here.
Forget about the 2 points, it would never happen nor would I particularly want it to happen because of the precedent it would set with regards to future game results standing.

The only legal action I would be interested in involves seeking the release of the audio so we can all judge whether any corrupt activity took place.

Incompetence is one thing but corruption is a totally different matter.
 
Oh I think he's entirely right. Morally Tigers have a very strong case, legally we have next to nothing.

No court is interested in hearing a case about on-field decisions. It won't have any legs without some proof of fraud or malpractice.

I just want to ensure Tigers fans understand, whatever your passion about this issue, there basically no chance Tigers get the 2 premiership points back and basically no chance of this being heard in court.

Not being able to take the case to court will not be a representation of incompetence of lack of commitment on behalf of the club, and I don't want to read people complaining about Tigers weakness when no legal action is taken. The club has no options here.
Funnily for someone (NRL) that can put all of this to bed, they are trying their best to entice us to jump in bed with them.
Morally they are obligated to show they have nothing at all to hide, before anyone decides wether the matter goes to court or not. The court recommend this take place first.
Ethically the NRL are a disgrace.
Legally at least the truth comes out.
Don’t get upset with me. Your posting is #1 , I just don’t like the opinion piece . This guy gets paid to write rubbish, don’t feed nonsense.
 
Precedent was set long before our time.
Game was over after 80mins
Douehi was the last play and way over time, but conversations are allowed.
Why restart a game that’s ticked to game over.
PLEASE do not give me morally, legally ethically. Who do you support?
 
Precedent was set long before our time.
Game was over after 80mins
Douehi was the last play and way over time, but conversations are allowed.
Why restart a game that’s ticked to game over.
PLEASE do not give me morally, legally ethically. Who do you support?
More Questions

who advised on field ref to restart ?
what was the conversation that took place between the referee and bunker during the conversion ?
What was the conversation after AD conversion, but before the controversial illegal re start ?
why didn’t the bunker advice to the ref game was over, no need to re start ?
Why is the referee seen running away ?
Who made our players set up for a kick off and not a end of game hand shake ?

Not me.
 
*WARNING! MAJOR RANT BELOW! *

Thanks very much for posting that. It's great to get different views and opinions and look at them objectively.

He's compiled a comprehensive, 'matter of fact' style, article that shows why he has the view he does.

I disagree.

Journalist or not, he is still a person writing about what he thinks. And so are we.

I could definitely give him a run for his money when it comes to banging on about something I'm passionate about (I'm sure a lot of you are aware of this by now! Sorry... 😔), so I will respond to the point quoted that stood out to me and give it a good try:

"Examples of rugby league decisions being judicially reviewed are virtually non-existent."

To which I posit this:

Yes, taking sporting disputes to state or federal court - to my knowledge this is true.

However.

What happens when a player is put on report for say, a hip drop tackle, or swearing and abusing a referee?

They are put on report and sent to "the judiciary".

Never been there, but my guess is that on the Monday or Tuesday (day/s after the event, mind) the player is sent to the NRL's offices, stands in a room next to his representative, and the actions of his reported indiscretion are then thoroughly examined using all available audiovisual data - numerous cameras and angles, slow motion, however many microphones... You get the drift.

The player's representative is there to try to convince the panel of 'adjudicators' he was wrongly charged.

Sometimes they're successful. Most times they are aren't, and on top of that, for having the gall to challenge the referee's on field ruling, they are dealt a harsher penalty than if they had just accepted the ban and stayed home.

Now call me crazy, but to me this kind of reminds me of a court (which, unfortunately, I have been in, but we won't go into that! 🤣).

The NRL is the de facto supreme court of its own competition.

They are a law unto themselves and this is just another example in a history rife with hypocrisy and double standards.

So we have two hypotheticals:

Case 1
A referee makes a decision on field and puts a player on report. After a delay of 1,2... however many days after the fact, it is then examined and the player has the right to representation and the chance to be found innocent and incorrectly charged.


Case 2
A referee doesn't make an on field decision, is contacted by the person in the bunker about something (not in the rules btw...), ignores the captain from team A trying to make a challenge (not in the rules btw...) clearly heard on TV coverage saying "it's been cleared" when there is no possible way it could have been (unless Klein is a blind man with a Delorean...not sure if this is in the rules tbh), accepts a challenge from the captain of team B (thereby challenging the decision he has not made - not in the rules btw... ), the bunker awards a penalty to team B - that even the NRL said was the wrong decision - completely missing the fact that before the incident in question the player recommencing play was offside....

The result is despite all of the things that were known to have self admittedly been done wrong at that time, the tigers have absolutely ZERO recourse because referees make mistakes, what happens on the field and all that...

I don't care about bullshit soft whistles and "we messed up. Sorry champ, now off you go, Tiger 😉".

Fk that. I know the tigers will never get within a country mile of those two points, and yes I'm a tigers fan, but I can honestly say that I believe this whole situation would never have happened to the Roosters or Storm, et al.
🎯🎯credit to @TurnStyle . Ill sign you up any day.✅
 
You do have to take emotion out of it (not my strong point!) and look at things pragmatically, and @jirskyr you're completely right that people still hoping for the 2 points or taking the nrl to court will likely be very disappointed, and it's great you're showing the argument against and giving a heads up.

The tigers really are in a horrible position in this; they are in the right, have all the evidence in their favour (even the lack of audio is suspicious, or at least circumstantial evidence) and as far as I can tell, public support.

But really, taking the nrl to court would be like suing your boss; you might win, but it's not going to do you any favours going forward.

It really is about the principle. Instead of deferring and staying quiet like a kid trying to avoid getting in trouble, why can't the nrl own it and come out and say
"We got it wrong. We apologise to Wests Tigers, but unfortunately the implications of overturning the result at this time would have too great an impact on the competition".

"We are actively working on providing greater transparency and clarification of the rules to ensure that this situation doesn't happen again."

There you go Mr V'Landys. I've even written it for you.
 

OPINION​

Following the siren song of legal action will result in more heartache for Tigers​

Darren Kane

Darren Kane

Sports Columnist
August 5, 2022 — 11.44am


It’s by equal measure both curious and entirely understandable that a fortnight later it’s still a matter of discussion whether the result of the Wests Tigers-North Queensland match might actually be overturned - whether as a result of some sort of opaque and actually non-existent adjudication and appeals process.

For it’s a defining characteristic of sport and the rules which govern all sports, that field-of-play decisions must be respected; that sports tribunals, and administrations, must not trespass upon the autonomy of match officials. Even if they royally stuff up.

The North Queensland Cowboys take on the West Tigers in round 19 of the 2022 NRL Premiership

Yet nonetheless, if I was infected by the great enthusiasm and great devotions which burden long-suffering Wests Tigers players, fans, coaches and chairpersons, I’d be abjectly filthy about, and gutted by the end result of the July 24 match. Ecstasy isn’t supposed to be followed by such blinding agony.

And on that basis alone, in actuality I’d be going right off like a frog inside a filthy orange, black and white football sock, if the match outcome mattered to me even in some obscure way. Multiple arguable mistakes, of the kind which together amounted to the match officials awarding a penalty to the Cowboys, simply shouldn’t happen.

Yet just as players routinely might err and come up short in the heat of battle, there’s also no effort without error and shortcoming, when it comes to match officials. Everyone, in all walks of professional life, makes mistakes. Sport doesn’t occur inside a vacuum.

Plenty of people can’t make decisions quickly when they get to the front of the queue at McDonald’s, let alone when actual pressure is applied. Yet listen to the rhetoric, and referees have their eyes re-painted on each Tuesday afternoon.

In 2006, the AFL decided it had the power to overturn the result of the ‘Sirengate’ Fremantle-St Kilda match, distorted by an umpire missing the final siren and permitting the game to run for another 10 seconds or thereabouts, during which short interlude more points were scored, and the lead was swapped.

In that case and at the time, the AFL’s rules relevantly provided that the match timekeepers shall sound the siren to signal the end of a quarter “until a field umpire acknowledges that the siren has been heard and brings play to an end”, and also, that play in each quarter (including the final quarter) shall come to an end when any one of the field umpires hears the signal.

The AFL’s investigations demonstrated that the timekeeper erred in only allowing the siren to sound until they witnessed players from the leading team celebrating, and not until (as was required) an umpire positively acknowledged the sounding of the siren and brought play to a final halt.
So it’s not as if there’s absolutely no precedent with the Wests Tigers having a crack. But in the AFL’s experience, reversing the match outcome caused as much consternation as doing nothing would have. And also, the AFL are a bit of a closed biosphere when it comes to these things.
Tigers chairman Lee Hagipantelis held talks with senior NRL officials on Thursday over the refereeing controversy.

Tigers chairman Lee Hagipantelis held talks with senior NRL officials on Thursday over the refereeing controversy.

However, the Wests Tigers’ case is crucially different. The NRL’s operations rules include provisions that say, categorically, that in all cases it’s the match referee who’s the sole arbiter of when play shall cease after the half-time or full-time siren sounds. The same rules, in the next paragraph, further state that the referee may extend a match to award a penalty or to complete the play currently underway, at the referee’s discretion.

Any argument that the events, which led to the Cowboys being awarded a penalty after the final whistle, somehow happened after the completion of play and in circumstances where the penalty simply couldn’t be awarded, is futile. The facts drawn from the match footage eviscerate the essence of the argument.

Wests Tigers’ contention that the match was over should garner sympathy, but it’s a losing argument. It would also create a mightily slippery slope, if match results could be overturned in such circumstances, and especially where the NRL’s rules are silent.

The short point is that the referee had quite clearly NOT decided that the match was at an end, where the referee is the sole decider of that fact.

There isn’t any right of appeal here. It would emasculate the power and authority of every rugby league official in the country, if results of this contentiousness could be simply overturned in circumstances where there is no right, power or authority to do so. For if new rules and new policy is invented ‘on the fly’ about such matters, the inevitable consequence is that it becomes the Cowboys who will then appeal. And then win.

Sports administrators and tribunals must refrain from interfering in such matters. Courts have a ridiculously limited appetite for resolving arguments rooted in disagreements about the correctness of in-play refereeing decisions. Sport requires finality, not judges holding a rulebook in one hand and a crystal ball in the other. Which makes sense - sport would be utterly unworkable otherwise.

Examples of rugby league decisions being judicially reviewed are virtually non-existent. When disputes involving other sports, such as thoroughbred racing, have wound their way into court, judges invariably give such cases short shrift. The relevant rules invariably preserve the sanctity of the umpire’s call, unless the rules of the actual sport permit otherwise.

Moreover, decisions of the Court of Arbitration for Sport are plentiful. The starting point is that in-play decisions are immune from review. CAS has refused to overturn decisions disqualifying boxers because of ‘below the belt’ punches, and officials disqualifying winning race walkers not walking properly.

CAS refused to intervene even where Olympic gymnastics judges made blatant errors calculating a competitor’s accumulated scores, because the authority of referees would be ‘fatally undermined’ if every decision was open to post-match examination.

Jurisprudence illustrates that interference by the CAS will be an open possibility only in peculiar and rare instances. If a sport’s rules demand a referee control a match in a concrete way - such as the order of play in a penalty shootout – it’s conceivable that a breach might be reviewable.

At the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City two decades ago, a South Korean speed skating case confirmed the CAS would intervene if it were proven by direct evidence that a referee’s decision was made as a manifestation of corruption or bad faith.

But such cases are almost impossible to prove. In the boxing competition at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, Roy Jones Jnr lost the gold medal bout. Months later all three judges were found to be hopelessly corrupt. By then it was too late to appeal.

Sport at its best is gloriously unscripted, uncertain and compelling. The spectacle lies in the immediacy and the uncertainty. Inherently subjective, instantaneous, line-ball judgement calls on complex rules and unclear facts will never be right all of the time. And almost always, they won’t and mustn’t be appealable.
Paid for by Peter Vlandi
 
You do have to take emotion out of it (not my strong point!) and look at things pragmatically, and @jirskyr you're completely right that people still hoping for the 2 points or taking the nrl to court will likely be very disappointed, and it's great you're showing the argument against and giving a heads up.

The tigers really are in a horrible position in this; they are in the right, have all the evidence in their favour (even the lack of audio is suspicious, or at least circumstantial evidence) and as far as I can tell, public support.

But really, taking the nrl to court would be like suing your boss; you might win, but it's not going to do you any favours going forward.

It really is about the principle. Instead of deferring and staying quiet like a kid trying to avoid getting in trouble, why can't the nrl own it and come out and say
"We got it wrong. We apologise to Wests Tigers, but unfortunately the implications of overturning the result at this time would have too great an impact on the competition".

"We are actively working on providing greater transparency and clarification of the rules to ensure that this situation doesn't happen again."

There you go Mr V'Landys. I've even written it for you.
VLandiy forgets to mention , audio will be produced, there is no need to go to court.
 
I get the feeling the last thing he wants is the audio made public!
Ain’t that the truth . Going to court could bring out mobile phone records. You can’t hide from digital technology, everything has a foot print.
This week Klien and others have plenty of time to talk to crooks, they have allocated games.
To Follow betting irregularities, follow phones and texts these days is way to easy for forensics, it places someone somewhere.
 
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I said to barrister once
If I got caught for killing a person whilst driving and stoned, how would they really know that I had smoked just before the accident ?
Answer
Technology can now tell the courts at what time , what drug was taken. These days everything has a footprint, people have to tread carefully, theirs no getting away with anything anymore, I know.
 
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