Quote ="Stu M"Just found out more about it. Not trying to defend Wigan by any means but it seems that for regular season games there are unlimited subs. Its not like SL whereby if a player is injured they'll carry on playing after being strapped up. At Academy level any sign of an injury and they are subbed straight away. Given that this has been the norm over the season, Wigan have carried on in this way.
Both sides were told that given it was a SF there would only be 8 interchanges but it seems like somewhere in the middle of it all, this has been ignored.
Apparently Warrington didn't make an official complaint as such, they just referenced the fact that for future knockout games there should be interchange officials available. Its then snowballed from there and as soon as a Board meeting was called there was only ever going to be one outcome and a precedent set.'"
Just returned to the forums to point out this is wrong. Academy games are all 8 subs the same as with all other levels of the professional competition. It is also exactly like Super League in that players get strapped up and carry on. Basically your whole post is untrue, nothing changed for the semi finals and they adhere to the same interchange rules as SL.
As you rightly pointed out later, there is also no reserve ref appointed to any level of academy rugby bar the final so no one to manage the subs (on the odd occasion you get a young match official doing it voluntarily). They're generally reliant on the honesty of the clubs and can look back at the footage if an issue is raised.
I don't know what caused the timing issue. Possibly a late complaint. Possibly took a while to deduce what happened with the subs as there isn't a camera pointed at the bench the whole time. You would have a bit of detective work to do tracking which players are on and off. Then they would have to check in Wigan what (if any) concussion assessments happened as they can result in free subs.
