Why refs need to keep standing up to schoolyard bully players by doubling down on sin bin stance

In the great big schoolyard that is the National Rugby League, the referees are the hall monitors and the players are the physically imposing bullies who don’t like being told what they can and can’t do.

And the coaches play the role of the parents of these schoolyard bullies who can’t believe that their little Johnny would ever put a foot wrong.

The refs, whose uniform would not be any less fashionable if they did indeed wear a hall monitor sash, have been empowered to stand up for themselves by their school administration/NRL executives in recent years.

And the way in which they have ensured some level of order in the playground is the increased use of the sin bin and send-offs.

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Now Mr Bennett and Mr Robinson want to have a word to the principal about their angels being unfairly treated by these hall monitors who are drunk on the power of their ability to enforce the rules that are there for all to see in black and white.

Mr Bennett wrote a note to the principal to say there are too many variations and interpretations so the NRL should “keep it simple and stick to the professional fouls for sin bins, and then let the match review committee take control of the grading and suspensions”.

And after hearing on the neighbourhood grapevine that his fellow parent was giving the school grief, Mr Robinson added that “we’re trying to get player safety up, which is really good for our game but we’ve got to ask the question, ‘have we overcorrected?’. How do we keep the contest in the game and deal with it (through suspensions) afterwards?”

The school principal, a Mr Annesley, has seen it all. He was once a hall monitor himself and he’s seen first hand how the school bullies love to operate in an unchecked environment.

And he is diplomatically nodding his head at parent-teacher night to show that he is listening to the concerns being raised but he is not going to change school policy.

If Bennett had his way, a player could be banished for 10 minutes if they illegally deny an opponent the ball on a kick-chase but they would only be placed on report and take their chances with the judiciary after the match unless they commit a high-grade act of foul play.

(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

So for your run-of-the-mill high shot that forces an opponent off would simply result in a penalty, while the tackled player usually then has to go off for 15 minutes for an HIA.

The standard practice when debating any NRL rule change is to take it to the Grand Final scenario.

Would Bennett, in the unlikely event of his Dolphins making the premiership decider in their second year, be satisfied if Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow was hit high with the result in the balance with 15 minutes to go and because it wasn’t deemed a send-off offence, the perpetrator stays on the field and his star fullback watches the remainder of the match from the dressing room?

The Dolphins get hammered without The Hammer and the match review committee bans the player for a game or three at the start of the following year.

Coaches are control freaks and they abhor the thought of referees being able to have a major say in the result of a match by sin-binning or sending a player off altogether.

The less that happens, the more control rests in the hands of coaches and vice versa.

Sin bins act “ as a deterrent for foul play” said Mr Annesley in his weekly school newsletter, delivered on Monday.

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“Just as they know they can be sent off for extreme foul play, (players) know that they can be sin-binned for foul play,” he said.

“Sin bins, send-offs are not new to the game. Everyone knows that any step outside the boundaries of the laws of the game can risk stronger action than just on-field penalties. Everyone has to play within those guidelines.”

And that’s exactly what the coaches don’t want. Enforceable guidelines where the hall monitors are encouraged to exercise the power that resides in their whistle, so to speak, which is more powerful than any threat to their lunch money that the school bullies can wield.

For anyone who thinks the five-minute sin bin, which has not been part of the rulebook for 30-plus years, is the answer should think again.

A third layer of punishment for professional fouls or thuggery would only complicate matters – no way was that a 10-minute sin bin, that should have been a five at the most, said name whichever coach you like the first time one of their little darlings gets banished.

Annesley addressed the perennial talking point yet again on Monday, as he did last year … and in 2022, the year before that, and so on and so on.

It’s almost like he’s a former politician who knows how to pay lip service to the controversy du jour before allowing the news cycle to move onto the next “crisis” and all will be forgotten for 12 months or so.