BILLY BOY JUST CAN'T KEEP OUT OF THE MEDIA!

 OPSM TO SPONSOR NRL REFS NEXT SEASON

I am sick to death of complaining about NRL Referees but last nights game has to be spoken about. The St George Illawarra vs Manly was shaping up to be a cracker of a match before the man upstairs decided it was to be all about him.

Bill Harrigan who is the head of the referees was the man pressing the button last night. You would think that he would know the rule that you can't lose control of the ball over the try line and than place your hand on it after the ball has hit the ground. Obviously not! Gasnier shimmy shimmy whoosed before crossing over for what looked like a great individual try, but he clearly lost the ball. If you haven't seen it watch the video below, on the slow motion replay you can see clear separation. After the first replay it would have been a red light for me, it was that clear. When the green light came on, I couldn't believe it. The commentators were blowing up. Anything to get in the news Billy Boy! I liked Warren Smith's comment "Here's $10000 Dessie get into them after the game!" Good on you Waz.

This is bad for the game, it's wrong for the players and fans to be punished by these imbeciles. Bill Harrigan after the game defended himself by saying "It was the benefit of the doubt, there was no separation.The ball was put down short of the line than rolled onto it." WOW WAH WEE WAH, he is going bananas! The worst thing is the Dragons claiming that he got it right. Gasnier said "I guess it was one of those 50/50 calls, I guess I got the benefit of the doubt." Are you insane Gaz? What's so 50/50 about it? The ball was clearly out of your hands, I even think that the Manly guy kicked it before Gaz touched it again! Wayne Bennett even denied there was any separation. That's alright the bloke is getting old, he probably is having troubles with his eye sight. 

Bobby Fulton was furious "It was the worst decision by a video referee since the introduction of the video ref in 97. The decision was a joke. Harrigan is a blight on the game and he must be sacked as a video ref." There has been a feud between Harrigan and Fulton for years now. Back in 1987 Fulton told Harrigan "I hope you get run over by a cement truck."

In the second half Brent Kite went to the line and handed the ball to Kieran Foran who was a metre in front of him. Shane Hayne was standing right there and signaled that he flicked it back. I could see it first time, he threw it so far forward it was worthy of a penalty. How do two men in the middle plus two touch judges miss that? Foran was looking at Hayne with a guilty look on his face, praying for him to award the try. If this is the game of the round and we have these monkeys adjudicating, the finals could be ruined!

 

Lets hope they can start to get it right, I think the first step to that is getting rid of the video ref. It will give the refs downstairs more confidence in their decisions and fans will accept that. All this slow motion rubbish is causing to many grey areas in our game.