Leeds' defeat of Warrington on Friday night was, as promised, a thoroughly entertaining spectacle between two of the top sides in the competition. Conditions were not perfect but we were still treated to an open, expansive game of Rugby League. One incident which stood out for me was Richie Myler's disallowed try, albeit for the wrong reasons...
After being referred upstairs the try was chalked off, the video referee had deemed that Mickey Higham encroached the 10 metres from an offside position. Now, Higham was indeed in front of Myler when he kicked the ball and indeed he was about 5-6 metres away from the ball when Lee Briers got the next touch on it, palming it back to Myler. However my problem with this rule is that not only is it open to endless inconsistencies, but it also leaves a nagging impression that the officials are looking for a reason to penalize attacking play.
Firstly, looking at the consistency element of this rule, in normal play how many times do we see officials penalizing players who are offside from the kick for being within 10 metres of a defender when he picks the ball up? The only time this would happen is if the offside player gets involved in play to make a tackle. On Friday Mickey Higham was in no way involved in the play which resulted in Myler going over for a (disallowed) try.
The decision to rule out the try was because the video official was meticulously following the letter of the law. If our officials want to practice in complete compliance with the laws of the game then that is all well and good, but this needs to be consistent not only across the game in question, but across all games in the competition. If that game on Friday was not televised and the option of the video referee not being available you would feel that nine times out of ten the try would be awarded. If we are going to see tries in big games turned away for rules like this then it needs to be enforced across every situation in every game. As I mentioned earlier, I can confidently say that there are numerous occurrences of players chasing a kick from an offside position who will encroach the 10 metres when a defender retrieves the ball, given that they stay out of a tackle they will go unpunished. So whilst this is the case we have a rule which essentially will only come into effect if you score a try from said kick. A rule which only takes effect if it can be used as a reason to disallow a try.
Another rule which has the same unsettling connotations as this is the obstruction rule. The rule in itself is sound in principle and is in place to prevent an attacking team gaining an unfair advantage. We have seen a host of tries turned down from a dummy runner making contact with a sliding defender, usually close to the defender's line. Now, if a decoy attacker runs through the defensive line and intentionally looks to prevent a defender from getting across to make a tackle it is undoubtedly unfair play and needs to be penalized. However more and more we seem to be seeing tries scored out wide in the corners struck off because contact with a defender was made 15-20 metres infield and we have to go back two or three passes to see this. Again you could argue that the officials have to follow the letter of the law but is it punishing good attacking football? How often would this be penalized if the same play took place on the half way line?
One thing which disappoints me is the seeming reluctance of Stuart Cummings, the Match Officials Director to support his fleet of merry whistle blowers by coming out to clarify his position on certain decisions and rulings. Tedious technicalities, annual tweaks to rules and glaring inconsistencies are having too much of an effect on our game. Put simply and generally, match officials are having too much of an influence on too many games and and if we are not careful this creeping pedantic culture will lead to suppression of expression.
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