DARYL POWELL has voiced his concern that players are staying down to win penalties again.
The Wakefield Trinity boss was unhappy after an incident during his side’s 27-16 defeat at Warrington Wolves on Saturday.
Shortly after the hour mark, Warrington captain George Williams remained on the floor and asked for treatment after being hit high in a tackle from England team-mate Mike McMeeken.
No penalty was awarded at first by Liam Rush, but the referee then changed his mind while a Wire physio was with Williams.
The RFL tried to clamp down on players staying down to prompt a review of an incident by extending the application of the green card to attacking players last year.
Players are not shown the card, first introduced in 2022 to send a player off for two minutes, if they are found to have been injured as a result of foul play.
Powell compared the Williams incident to two others involving Wakefield this season – one earlier in the Warrington game when he claimed Tyson Smoothy suffered his head injury but there was no review, and in their opening-round loss to Toulouse Olympique when Cameron Scott was green-carded after an alleged high tackle, which was not examined by officials.
“It’s happened to us a couple of times now,” said Powell. “Cam Scott gets hit on the head and stays down and gets a green card.
“Today Tyson gets hit on the head and ends up leaving the field for an HIA which he fails later on, but he gets hit and the game stops but there’s no penalty given.
“But there is a penalty when George Williams goes down in the second half. What are we doing, are we doing that (reviewing when players stay down) or not?
“That will be my question to Phil (Bentham, the RFL’s head of match officials) when I speak to him because I don’t understand.
“There have been numerous times this year – there was one in a Hull game the other week when there was a hip-drop, the player (Dan Russell after a Ligi Sao challenge) had to leave the field, it was seen on video and it should have been a penalty but wasn’t given. So what are we doing?
“It doesn’t make sense. All we are after is consistency. That would help massively. Are we now staying down to get a decision again or not? It’s confused me.”