I think calling it a joke is extremely unfair. As long as all teams know what the score is viz how offences are dealt with in advance it is a level playing field. Ref's can't win, they bin/red card players & get lambasted on here for trying to hog the limelight, they take the safer route & get the same. Personally I am happy with the current arrangement as long as ref's still have the authority to red if suitable. I am also comfortable if players are binned, especially if it means aggression stays in the game if it is deemed sufficient punishment.

One of the problems with judging Elima's tackle on Gaskell is that the Saints' player had two attempts at picking it up and he he wasn't [ithat[/i late after the second attempt. The fact that Silverwood hadn't blown is important in that [iif[/i Gaskell had picked the ball up at that second attempt he [icould[/i have played on (playing to the whistle) so the tackle was, or at least, would have been if he'd caught the ball, a legitimate one. It may well have been over physical (or however the ref described it) but even Silverwood didn't actually say it was late.

OK - in many ways "joke" is a little unfair, and they are being consitent in not binning anyone....

There are many other instances where the crime doesn't seem to match the punishment given though.

What needs to happen to see a red/yellow these days for overly agressive/dangerous play? Foster received a yellow for mucking around at play of the ball and that warranted 10 mins according to Silverwood, but Elima (at the time) only gave away a penalty for something far more dangerous.

this is pretty much what i was trying to say.

I thought Silverwood's first words were "late tackle" and he then went on to speak about not running in aggressively?

In which case I bow to your superior hearing, but I didn't hear him say that.

I was disappointed in Silverwood in that regard. I thought he called the penalty spot on but then lost a bit of authority by not seeming to clearly explain why he blew in the first place.

They removed the option of yellow for dangerous play a few years ago, reserving just for technical offences IIRC. It might have changed back but I am struggling to remember a recent instance.

Didn't foster see yellow for saints persistent offending?. Foster was just unlucky to be first player penalised after silverwood warned them.

If that was the case it was still pretty minor considering Elima's hit.

The offense is irrelevant if it was for persistent offending. Just unlucky it was the next offense.

Not quite the point I am making - What I mean is that persistent offending results in penalty after penalty. The offending team still suffer, and, when considering Elima's hit, surely that would have been deemed worse and worthy of a yellow?

Persistent offending doesn't bother me too much if the ref keeps pinging the offending team for an offence.

I thought Foster saw yellow for a professional foul?

Is the late hit on the kicker deemed a technical offence rather than a dangerous play? Or do they class that particular offence different to both?

Where's a qualified referee when you need one!

It's not a separate offence in the rules. It is just foul play. The refs were given a directive that a late hit on the kicker was an automatic 10 min sin bin, but like many things, it has seemingly died a quiet death.

That's the thing with the rules. (Apart from them needing a total rewrite that is.) You can't just look in one place and know all about whatever you need to know.

Technically it was a perfectly delivered late hit by Elima.

The real trouble with the rules is that the written version doesn't really count and to know what actually matters you have to go to the 'interpretation' currently in vogue and actually being used in games.

The problem there is that the a new 'interpretation' of the rule will be in the papers, traditionally at the start of the season, but then the RFL/referees director/refs themselves will change the new 'interpretation' to an updated, even newer version with no announcement from anyone; this updated version is often a simple reversion to where the old 'interpretation' is suddenly back in use. Through all this, the written rule will probably remain unchanged, as though they were protected like ancient parchment scrolls. At the end of the day the rules are on-line and could be changed, if there was a will to do it. It's not like they have to publish and print a paper book.

Exactly. For instance, i was watching the NRL last week and the commentators mentioned in passing that the 'encroachment' rule in Aus is now not strictly applied, and that basically a player inside the 10 will NOT be penalised unless he is 'active', a la offside in soccer. Now this is (and as has been seen on a couple of crucial recent SL incidents) a fundamental issue, and the fact that the Aussies just change the rules of the game at a whim without any consultation is absurd. As is the even more absurd situation that internationals are seemingly played under something called international rules, yet where is there a copy of the current version of those, and more to the point, there surely isn't a cat in hell's chance of all the players of all the squads somehow having knolwedge of a different set of rules than the ones they spend their lives playing under, which are bad enough.

Eh? Completely barking mad idea. "Active" my ar5e. How the feck does a ref have time to decide that?? It's open to wildly different interpretations.

I'm guessing that having a ref just watching the play the ball, and a ref just watching the line would help a bit?

I know, and also in this case it is directly AGAINST the rules, not a matter of interpretation, if you are offside that is it, so I don't understand how they can do it. Except they are the NRL and feel able to do what they want with their version of the rules.

Despite having two Refs on the field in the NRL there are still a few nebulous decisions seen every week. They are strong on poor hits on the last kick and mistimed tackles when a player is the air, but strangely when a player is hit in the head when in a horizontal position due to the nature of the tackle its ignored, as Benji Marshall found out recently,

I agree it is madness having different rules for different hemispheres & for internationals. I do prefer the Aussies commentators' generally more mature response to high shots. They recognise the offence but don't shriek to hysterical levels like our muppets which is then transfered to the terraces or message boards.

I don't really have a problem with the 'non-active' for the offside at kicks decisions, after all we do the same at the PTB where offside defenders are rarely penalised if they keep out of the game, and there are five officials at every game nowadays (or three + video) surely that should be enough. It's similar to the rule in soccer and they manage to police it, and it does seem a bit 'off' to knock off a score for an offence which had no bearing on the try, so maybe we could just ask the refs what they think?

What I would ask is that it's either deemed a 'trial' with a specific start and end date, or written into the rules. I'm sick of 'interpretations'.