ST HELENS co-coach Dec Hardman has called for some consistency when it comes to video referees in the women’s game.
Sky Sports showed their second of just three Women’s Super League games of the regular season on Friday night when St Helens travelled to Headingley to face Leeds Rhinos.
The play-off games and the Grand Final will also be shown by the broadcaster, with these games coming with the benefit of a video referee too.
At 20-16 up on Friday, Leeds thought they had confirmed victory through an Evie Cousins try, only for the video referee to confirm the on-field decision of ‘no try’ when Saints fullback Beri Salihi was judged to have grounded the ball in her own in-goal area just a split second before Cousins touched it down.
The video referee on the night was former St Helens player Tara Jones, and while neither coach publicly questioned her appointment in that role, Hardman did say there needs to be some uniformity across the league.
“Evie Cousins came so close with that effort towards the end but that’s one of the difficulties with this game now, if you’re going to implement that video referee in some games it then needs to be every week,” said Hardman.
“We’ve been in situations before when calls like that have gone against us and we’ve lost a semi-final, so I know how that feels, but unless we have consistency with what we are doing there is always going to be controversy.”
While St Helens went on to win the game 20-22 thanks to a late Caitlin Casey try and superb touchline conversion from Faye Gaskin, it could have come at a cost, with halfback Zoe Harris helped from the field with a knee injury after 16 minutes.
“We’re not quite sure what the problem is,” added Hardman.
“Hopefully we will get her looked at this week and then see where we go from there.”