First they had 14 on the field, then they didn’t have 14 on the field, then the 14th player actually scored the try…..at this point who really knows what happened.
It looks like the Bulldogs are going to lose their points and that’s fair enough. When this has happened in the past I’ve been against over turning the result and handing the point to the opposition team, but i think case I think you have a good argument for that major move.
Penrith had the lead with three minutes left in the game and were forced to defend against 14 attacking players. The Bulldogs, with 14 players on the field, tied the game up and it led to the game winning, go ahead conversion by Hazem El Masri and that was game over, the Panthers never got the ball back from the short kick off.
Its compelling…
Its not like I’m trying to talk up a win for Penrith either. They are going no where this year and as far as I’m concerned, we are not only 8 straight losses away from being rid of Matthew Elliott. Believe me, I was riding that El Masri kick because I knew a successful conversion would be one step close to Penrith getting rid of a coach who is a disaster.
Now, the thing I can’t understand is, how after 101 years and with all the people getting paid to make sure this doesn’t happen, we still find ourselves in situations where 14 players can end up on the field!
You have both clubs monitoring the players on the field, you have an NRL official who’s job it is to allow players or disallow players on and off the field….you have coaches, trainers and the players themselves….and you STILL have 14 players on the field late in a game in 2009!
I think we need to have a system where players can only be interchanged in a certain area of the sideline. Make players have to come over to the interchange official on the half way like on the broadcast side of the field.
Running players on one side while running players off through the in goal or on the other side of the field is just asking for trouble. So it needs to stop.
Now the argument is “What if we are defending our own line, we have a player injured on the far side of the field, we are effectively down to 12 men until we get the injured player off, how can you expect the injured player to get to the half way line to get off the field?”.
My answer is “To bad, that’s Rugby League. Players get injured, teams sometimes have to defend with 12 players and at the end of the day, it will all even out over the course of the season”.
Coaches want to control every aspect of the game and eliminate any aspect that is not controllable. Players getting injured can not be controlled, however if you get him off the field straight away and throw on a fresh player, you can control that aspect of the event.
Coaches will hate the idea of having an uncontrollable aspect of the game. An injured player leaving a team one man short for one set of six and the coach can’t do anything…..thats their worst nightmare.
Its for the good of the game though.
14 players on the field, give me a break. This is 2009, you have professional clubs, professional players, two referee’s and a fricken sideline official.
This should not be happening!
Get them on and off the field on one side of the field in one interchange zone. If needed make three of them, but all on the same side of the field, through the sideline so it can all be easily monitored.
Is it that hard to work out?
