“I don’t expect everyone’s going to agree.”
Those were the ominous words uttered by NRL head of elite football Graham Annesley on Monday afternoon.
He had just taken the stage at the NRL’s weekly football briefing, which typically covers game trends, rule clarifications and refereeing decisions.
But this week was different. Annesley skipped his slides about set restarts. He avoided metrics of speed of the game entirely.
Three weeks after the NRL’s strict new edict on high contact, Annesley stepped behind the lectern, grabbed the remote, and dived into video lowlights of some of the season’s worst high tackles.
It wasn’t to shame the tacklers: “When it comes to highlighting high contact, we obviously don’t like highlighting it,’ he said. But this was important business.
In front of a handful of journalists in person and perhaps a few more on the livestream, Annesley himself had something to tackle. Something very big to tackle.
Just what constitutes a sin bin and what doesn’t.
Sin bins are up
The NRL has told referees to use sin bins or send offs “for contact deemed careless or reckless and involving a significant degree of force around the head and neck”, according to a statement from early May.
The impact has been significant, with more than one sin bin recorded each match on average over the past three weeks.
But there have also been dangerous tackles that have been penalised but have not led to sin bins, to the confusion of fans.
The punishment for a sin bin — playing one man down for 10 minutes — is more significant than that of a penalty.
Across the past three rounds, 60 tries have been scored with at least one player in the sin bin, according to stats compiled by Jillaroos analyst Tim Newans. Forty-four of those have been scored by the team with the numerical advantage.
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There’s no doubt: the difference between a penalty and a sin bin is points.
‘Forceful’ becomes the measure
Last Monday in a response to a journalist’s question at the same weekly football briefing, Annesley said it might be tempting as a “fan of a team” or a “casual observer” to find similarities between two tackles that involve contact to the head and were refereed differently, then complain of inconsistency.
“We’ll never be able to satisfy people who look at an incident and say, well how can that be a sin bin and look at another incident and why is that not.”
One week later, Annesley revived the topic himself.
“I know there is a lot of discussion out there at the moment about perceived inconsistency between each of these decisions,” he said.
“What I wanted to try to give you a feel for today is the sorts of indicators the referees and the bunkers look for.”
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Annesley’s presentation focused on the word “forceful”.
Whether the contact with the head or neck was direct or bounced up off the ball, it didn’t matter: the obligation was on the defender to avoid the area, and if there was forceful contact they would be sent to the sin bin.
But this is where it gets murky.
Annesley warned it was impossible to find “full consistency”, but used a series of video examples to try to show which categories high contact tended to fall into.
Taking a cute from Annesley, the ABC compiled a series of instances from the past three rounds in which the contact was deemed not forceful enough to warrant a sin bin.
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Most are less serious than the offences leading to sin bins, but many still remain “forceful”.
Annesley believes for the most part referees have got it right in recent rounds. And his efforts this week are to help fans understand where referees are drawing the line.
He is adamant there are factors specific to each decision that lead a referee one way or the other.
But he recognises that everyone will have their own opinion.
Getting used to playing short
Until players adjust — if they ever do — sin bins are now a common part of rugby league life.
In the NHL ice hockey league, two-minute ‘sin bins’ are so common that playing with an extra player (or one fewer) has become an art form.
The Tampa Bay Lightning won last year’s Stanley Cup finals due to their ability with the extra man. They scored seven goals from 16 power play opportunities in the final five games of the season, including the game winner in their clinching victory over the Dallas Stars.
NHL: Dave Sandford
)Despite being a league known for its toughness, the NHL regularly penalises relatively minor infringements like holding, tripping and delaying the game, leaving teams short-handed.
There is a sense of inevitability about hockey teams having to play at least some of the match undermanned due to marginal calls made by referees. Indeed “penalty killers” are valuable specialists.
The NRL try statistics prepared by Jillaroos analyst Newans above referenced were prompted by a curiosity of just how rare it is to concede a try with an extra man.
If we continue to see averages of at least one sin bin per match, NRL coaches will develop penalty killing — and power play — strategies of their own.
For ice hockey fans, that might be a good thing. But as Annesley says, it’s unlikely everyone will agree.
