The Serve

Are the NRL missing the point?

DAILY SERVE: Wed 31/1

Golden point is in the NRL to stay, with the even more progressive golden try put on the backburner. Apparently this is an unpopular decision. The Daily Telegraph reports of poll 10 coaches saw 9 of them prefer a deadlock be broken with a try. Why? So their players can spend more time on the field, risking injury and rendering them even more useless for the following week? Is it so fans can get more value for money? No and no. It’s because coaches are sick of losing matches to dubious field goals, or more precisely, dubious missed field goals, where scores of defenders are consistently offside.

NRL boss David Gallop quite rightly pointed out that if a field goal can win a game in the 79th minute, why not the 81st? There’s also the certainty of players giving away penalties when a penalty can’t directly result in a loss. Yet in the rhetoric, there was no mention tightening the refereeing. We’ve got touch judges, we’ve got a bloke in the stands. Surely finding offside players should not be a like finding a needle in a haystack.

Fix the refereeing and you fix the problem.