Now I've been asking for this for the past 2 seasons. The NRL has to do something about some shocking decisions made by referees. They will be trialling this in the Toyota Cup until the end of the season. The premise behind it is that a captain will be able to challenge a referees call in regards to penalties, knock-ons and tries that are not reviewed to the Video Referee. They will be allowed 1 incorrect challenge per half but as many correct challenges as they want. This, in my view, is a positive. The main argument against this is the affect it will have on referees. Now the standard of refereeing has dropped significantly in the past few season, mainly since the introduction of 2 referees. The game had 1 referee for 100 years and it worked fine. Now I see the captains challenge as a positive. The refs probably won't be under the microscope as much if an incorrect call is rectified on the field. They use this in cricket, NFL and Hockey. A few technical issue will need to be nutted out. In the NFL there are no challenges allowed in the final 2 minutes of each half. This is in order to prevent teams from delaying games. The captain's challenge will have to be made immediately. Not like in cricket when it can take up until a minute after the delivery for the captain to decide to challenge. I'd say a maximum of 10 seconds is allowed to challenge. After that time the call cannot be challenged. Referees may not feel too good about their call being over turned but they won't be in the media as much for stuffing up if their call doesn't end up affecting a team.
You need to be a member of 1Eyed Eel to add comments!
Replies
Personally, I don't like it.
Virtually every try is referred upstairs already, so I don't think it will improve that area all that much. It's rare that a mistake is made regarding a 20-restart/line-dropout, and anything close is already referred upstairs.
It will be used primarily for the strip/loose-carry rulings, which are generally 50-50 anyway.. In most cases, even after 10 video reviews, I doubt you'd get a consensus between referees.
I'd rather just make a strip result in 6-again, and lessen the referees' impact that way.
It's also meant for the high tackle penalties. We see so many penalised just because of the way the player's bodies' react to the hit. We see the replay and realise it was just a good hit. In the Parra Vs Knights game last season, Fui hit a Knights player in a good tackle. He was penalised for a "high" tackle and the subsequent penalty goal lost us the match. In our match against the Roosters last year Jason Ryles knock on over the line. It wasn't referred and they won the match from it.
So what do we actually have in the end....a 3 play playoff.....on field refs...V...video ref....V.. the "captains call"....good luck in sorting that crap out....we may have to go like the NFL..allow 3-4 hours to get a result.....
yep, its a good idea, but i think only one challenge wrong per game, but either way its a good idea super22