Mad Monday - Benefit Of The Doubt (2012)

There is a blight on our great game which came to head this weekend.

It is a case of our game becoming so stupid and soft, that it's turning into AFL, almost literally.

Most seriously is the video referee awarding tries via benefit of the doubt.

Lets put this simply, we are saying 2+2=9 because 9 looks a bit like a 4 and that's good enough. Just like in AFL if you can't kick the ball between the two big sticks, you still get rewarded for going close by getting a point.

We have referees to ensure the game is fairly played by both teams.

So why do we completely and blatantly contradict this by allowing one side a massive advantage when a decision whether a try has been scored or not?

Benefit of the doubt. Doubt. How, when you have admitted doubt of a try being scored, come to the conclusion that it has been scored?

After the uproar over the tries scored in the Manly vs North Queensland final on the weekend, I was not at all surprised to hear Bill Harrigan trot out his all too frequent comment of "The video ref got it wrong."

Bill, if this happens more than once in the year, then the person who is reviewing, training and coaching these refs is clearly not doing his job properly.

Today we now have more refs in the game, the refereeing quality has declined rapidly and now it's got to the extent where it isn't just affecting game results, but also who advances in the finals race.

It's time for Bill Harrigan and Stuart Raper not to resign, but to be sacked. They are incompetent. The referees don't have their support and they are not improving. You cannot get a more damning situation against you then that.

It's high time we stopped having this media craving, self-obsessed, incompetent, unreliable, unsupportive man and his sidekick who is quiet, ineffective, unskilled and utterly inexperienced in refereeing as our ref bosses.

Make the refs boss someone who cares only for the game. Someone who will stand by the referees instead of alienating them and publicly criticising and sacking them. This ritual only makes the referees more cautious and less inclined to make a tough call, which, whether right or wrong, fans would be able to accept more.

Otherwise we'll continue seeing illegal on-field acts being cautioned while victims of said act are unable to return, which is essentially penalising the victim and rewarding bad behaviour. We'll continue seeing the utter debacles we do over benefit of the doubt tries being awarded, completely legitimate shoulder charges being ruled dangerous, teams exploiting the obstruction rule and the like.

Harrigan and Raper should be getting the sack, not the referees in the middle, whose performances have been completely hindered by these two idiots.