Cheating

[terrywebbisgod]

1 minute ago, Wolford6 said:

I haven't got time to go into every try that Leeds  has scored over the past forty years.

 

 

We have a winner.

Surprised it's taken this long

????????

[DavidM]

Catching up on my games just watched Cameron Smith despicably altering his pass to throw it into a guy standing out the back to con a penalty . I was just about to applaud the ref for not falling for it then bizarrely his junior tells him to give a pen. Absolutely hate it ... Australian captain .Is he related to Steve ?

[Whippet13]

The Australian commentors aren't helping much, over the last couple of weeks certain ones have been praising players during commentary for "clever" play in milking penalties by deliberately throwing the ball at offside players. It's a clear blight on the game at present and is influencing results. Maybe 2 referees might help in SL as it seems worse here than in the NRL.

[DavidM]

2 minutes ago, Whippet13 said:

The Australian commentors aren't helping much, over the last couple of weeks certain ones have been praising players during commentary for "clever" play in milking penalties by deliberately throwing the ball at offside players. It's a clear blight on the game at present and is influencing results. Maybe 2 referees might help in SL as it seems worse here than in the NRL.

Absolutely . No surprise Michael Ennis thought it was clever play , and when JT went out of his way to find someone to throw it at it was ‘ genius ‘ . Is that how you want to play the game ...and more crucially , reward it as if so they’ll continue to do it ?

[DavidM]

3 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

I think coaches are going to always coach players to play on the edge. There is a very fine line, some would say an often blurry one, between clever play and cheating.

I think we have probably 3 big problems in with this area of the game at the moment.

Firstly, we have a lot of grey areas in the game, which are basically impossible to referee. The rules say that players must get off the tackled player immediately. But that often isnt physically possible. So it because whatever the referee thinks. This can often look, feel and be pretty arbitrary. Conversely in other ways we have created rules around things like obstruction where things which dont feel like obstruction are given as obstruction because they tick boxes on a list.

Secondly, the standard of officiating isnt high enough. We dont have enough referees from top to bottom and we don't provide them with processes and procedures that best help them get the right decision and communicate that with fans.

Thirdly, the rules themselves dont help the officials. By that i mean what the officials are asked to do,How much is just not humanly possible which leaves a lot of guesswork for them, and thos 50/50 guesses are what encourages players to try it on. For instance as players have gotten fitter and stronger goal line defence has improved drastically. Its not unheard of for players to defend 20 tackles (sometimes more) on their line. So players arent afraid to give away penalties there. If your line is out of place, lay on, maybe you dont give away a penalty if you do, you reset and try again. If you get the chance strip the ball its 50/50 whether you give away a penalty and reset or get the scrum. This often leads to very slow very scruffy rucks especially in early tackles close to the line.

The question is how can we improve it. 1 and 3 have the same answer. Look again at the rules and look at them from an outcome point of view. That is look at what we want the game to look like and structure the rules that will encourage that and the referee can actually perform to.

As for the second, start from the bottom. Train all scholarship and academy players as referees. Have them referee youth and amateur RL as part of their academy contracts. Some will find a natural affinity for it and choose to go that way, others will find it a way to stay in the game after injury/being let go. Once we have more referee's reffing at youth and amateur level we have a wider base to promote to semi-pro and pro level and can then look to an expanded professional pool. Also start again with the VR. Right now VR is used in different ways by different refs and it seems very arbitrary, the try/no try becomes something of a nonsense when on too many occasions, and we often have no idea why a decision is made as it is. I think both RU and the NRL do a far better job in that respect.

 I think it’s implied in your points , but the instruction from above the officials are getting isn’t helping . They are straitjacketed into black n white , letter of the law officiating rather than common sense managing of what they see . And they are scrutinised fully on that protocol 

[Mattrhino]

One thing I would like is for the ref to stop giving penalties for every slight touch at the ptb.

We will never beat the Aussies if our players never have to tough it out of difficult situations. When in SL all they have to do is flap about and drop the ball to be given a free 30 metres.

[Mattrhino]

9 hours ago, scotchy1 said:

I think coaches are going to always coach players to play on the edge. There is a very fine line, some would say an often blurry one, between clever play and cheating.

I think we have probably 3 big problems in with this area of the game at the moment.

Firstly, we have a lot of grey areas in the game, which are basically impossible to referee. The rules say that players must get off the tackled player immediately. But that often isnt physically possible. So it because whatever the referee thinks. This can often look, feel and be pretty arbitrary. Conversely in other ways we have created rules around things like obstruction where things which dont feel like obstruction are given as obstruction because they tick boxes on a list.

Secondly, the standard of officiating isnt high enough. We dont have enough referees from top to bottom and we don't provide them with processes and procedures that best help them get the right decision and communicate that with fans.

Thirdly, the rules themselves dont help the officials. By that i mean what the officials are asked to do,How much is just not humanly possible which leaves a lot of guesswork for them, and thos 50/50 guesses are what encourages players to try it on. For instance as players have gotten fitter and stronger goal line defence has improved drastically. Its not unheard of for players to defend 20 tackles (sometimes more) on their line. So players arent afraid to give away penalties there. If your line is out of place, lay on, maybe you dont give away a penalty if you do, you reset and try again. If you get the chance strip the ball its 50/50 whether you give away a penalty and reset or get the scrum. This often leads to very slow very scruffy rucks especially in early tackles close to the line.

The question is how can we improve it. 1 and 3 have the same answer. Look again at the rules and look at them from an outcome point of view. That is look at what we want the game to look like and structure the rules that will encourage that and the referee can actually perform to.

As for the second, start from the bottom. Train all scholarship and academy players as referees. Have them referee youth and amateur RL as part of their academy contracts. Some will find a natural affinity for it and choose to go that way, others will find it a way to stay in the game after injury/being let go. Once we have more referee's reffing at youth and amateur level we have a wider base to promote to semi-pro and pro level and can then look to an expanded professional pool. Also start again with the VR. Right now VR is used in different ways by different refs and it seems very arbitrary, the try/no try becomes something of a nonsense when on too many occasions, and we often have no idea why a decision is made as it is. I think both RU and the NRL do a far better job in that respect.

I agree with everything, but the first thing we need is to sort out the penalty for not bieng able to get off the tackled player immediately which is almost comical in how inconsistent it is penalised. Sometimes the ref can blow up in the space of milliseconds where the tackling player hasn't even had a chance to get up off his knees. But in the main I think the rules are fine, the problem is some referees interpretation of the rules.

The Cats v Wigan game had 28 penalties. Compare that to the opening game of the WC where there was 3. Neither game was ill tempered or contained many dangerous tackles so why the massive difference in the penalty count.

A game with 28 penalties is ridiculous and shouldn't be happening and was the fault of the refs interpretation of the rules. The WC game shows you can get through a game of RL without the whistle constantly in the refs mouth.

[Mattrhino]

10 hours ago, DavidM said:

Absolutely . No surprise Michael Ennis thought it was clever play , and when JT went out of his way to find someone to throw it at it was ‘ genius ‘ . Is that how you want to play the game ...and more crucially , reward it as if so they’ll continue to do it ?

Although a lot of Aussies pundits seemed to love the WC because there was only one ref.

[fairfolly]

Why put all the blame on the Refs and players? What part do the coaches play in this? Answer, a massive part.

[DavidM]

1 hour ago, Mattrhino said:

Although a lot of Aussies pundits seemed to love the WC because there was only one ref.

On that specific point I agree , one ref . The WC definitely did seem to open eyes and at least you don’t get differing opinions confusing things .

[fairfolly]

Just read a piece by Shaun Wane. Part of it concerns cheating "he says if any player of mine tried to cheat to milk a penalty" he would consider dropping them.This was after a meeting with Steve Ganson after the Catalan game.He also was wanting a ruling about obstruction.Apparently he was satisfied with the answer and now says he will have to coach his players differently.

[dkw]

Well shaun wane would drop players who "exaggerate" don't you know... 

 

"I hope we never see it where players are looking for it and exaggerating it. I would never dream of telling my players to do that and I think we're going down a sticky road if we do.

"I detest it. I would consider dropping a player if they did that." 

Ah, he's a comedy genius.