NRL Play The Ball Crackdown

Before this blog, I had one about sport in general and wrote about how Aussie RL refs were always putting incidents on report rather than dishing out on field punishments. I described the officials as timid and maybe a bit stronger than that. If they were listening I don't know but sin binning has returned with gusto and well done for that.

The refs have also been given the green light to sort out the play the ball area. It has to be played properly but also cutting out trying to show the play the ball down illegally. The players have continued infringing and it can be hard to eliminate years of a certain behaviour in a short space of time.

This signal means leave the field of
play for ten minutes. 

In a game this week the penalty count was 33. Players were also pinged for back chatting the ref too. While some say the stricter refereeing is killing the spectacle. I'd prefer to say the messing about I saw in the highlights indicated the players are not learning to adapt. They were to blame, not the officials.

The ten metre defensive line allows the attacking team to make plenty of ground in their set of six plays. That's the way it is. Illegal efforts to slow the process made deserves penalising. Interestingly the Melboune Storm have often been accused of pushing the rules of the game more than others and they in particular have suffered under the crackdown. All I can say to the rule makers is keep it up. The players will learn....eventually.