Rugby league has an innate ability to make life more difficult. No code knows how to align the gun with its own foot more accurately and shoot. Yet that is what the NRL has done with its decision to introduce the captain’s challenge. Despite being trialled in only two pre-season games, the league decided to add yet another layer to the officiating quagmire just 10 days before the 2020 season is set to kick off.
If there is one thing the game does not need, it is more opportunity for confusion and controversy around officiating. The game’s narrative is hijacked weekly by one officiating controversy or another. Some of it is through what some would call human error and what harsher critics would label unacceptable incompetence. Most of the controversy though is systemic, a legacy of HQ’s constant need to tinker and constant refusal to undertake the necessary project of thoroughly tidying up the rules of the game.
Rugby league needs less grey. It needs fewer systemic sparks to create officiating firestorms. It does not need more breakpoints to cause confusion and manufactured drama. It does not need an untested and imprudent rule change implemented 10 days before the season starts.
It is unimaginable that nearly any other major sport would be simultaneously so disrespectful of their game’s essence – its rulebook – and so reckless with its potential ramifications.
Football took an age to bring in the use of goalline technology. College football in the US did not institute video replays until 20 full seasons after the NFL first used it. The AFL took nearly as long after the NRL first used it. The PGA Tour is moving as quickly on bringing change to the slow-play rule as the players it is attempting to speed up. Most sports consider major rule changes for a long time. Both the on-field ramifications and the impact on the wider game are thought through. Only in rugby league would a major change like a captain’s challenge be rushed through on the eve of the season.
The captain’s challenge in a vacuum is potentially not a horrific idea. It empowers the players. In theory, it should ease the pressure on officials. In theory, it should reduce mistakes.
The problems are two-fold though. First, none of the aforementioned benefits have been tested, nor have the likely negatives. Secondly, the captain’s challenge does not exist in a vacuum but will now coexist in a system that includes: a second referee that rarely understands the limits of his role; touch judges who have ill-defined job descriptions; a video refereeing system that is rarely held accountable and typically defines its own boundaries; a law book that has been tinkered with incessantly; and a cadre of referees who lack confidence because of the systematic move to disempower them.
The lack of testing around the captain’s challenge is profoundly worrying. Just two games were used to trial it. In one, the 10-second time window for a challenge was clearly ignored. There has been no study on the impact extra stoppages will have on the game. No study has been put in to the impact this will have on refereeing standards. Rugby league is not a stationary game so little thought has been given to determine if the captain is the right person to make the challenge.
This rule change also seems entirely unnecessary. Nobody was calling for both the captain’s challenge to be implemented and The Bunker to remain with all its current powers. It is absurd to bring in another mechanism to review a decision without consideration for its context. Games will go on longer. Respect for officials will decline. It further eradicates the power of the referee. One of the captains in the trials simply did not understand that they were awarded one challenge a game. It is unclear how it will be resolved when the nominated captain is off the field.
The NRL and the ARLC are charged with protecting the game. They are the custodians of the game but once again they have let rugby league down.
