I heard V'landys on the radio this morning in complete denial even suggesting that there are less 6 agains than last year and less injurys.. Was a good appointment before Covid but is showing his lack of footy touch badly with many of his latest calls..
The only desired effect is that the teams who are really good at making it look like they are complying are winning the six again and reaping all the benefits. A load of crap about the fewer penalties....half the ones being called as six again were never called as penalties in the past anyway..so that is a skewed statistic. The majority of the six again ones you don't even know why they are being awarded.......
NRL head of football pleased with penalty changes.
www.nrl.com
Graham Annesley is confident the 10-metre six-again rule has initially had the desired effect with fewer general penalties awarded and players being more compliant.
Data from the opening two rounds of 2021 shows the average number of penalties per game was 6.7 compared to 10 last season.
Ruck infringement six-agains have decreased to 5.3 per game from seven last year, while only 1.8 six-agains for 10-metre infringements – the newest rule addition – were called on average across the first 16 matches.
Last year, including finals, there were 344 inside 10-metre offside penalties blown in 169 premiership matches (2.03 per game).
Annesley, the NRL head of football, is pleased with the results but said "referees won't hesitate to go harder if they have to" and "they're not under any instruction to artificially keep those figures low".
"I think those savings in penalties have come from those areas where they would have given penalties in the past, like rucks and 10 metres," Annesley told NRL.com after his Monday media briefing.
"So I still think they're applying the same standards to all other facets of the game... The last thing I would want to do is give the impression that we're moving towards almost an 'anything goes' scenario.
"That's not the case at all. They've still got to apply the same standards, whether it be six-again for 10 metres, whether it be six-again for rucks or whether it be general play penalties.
"If [10-metre six-agains] were to creep up to two, three, four, five a game because players start pushing the limits, then so be it.
"But I'm not overly concerned about it; in fact, I'm happy that what we're seeing so far and what we're measuring so far is demonstrating that to this point, it is having an impact."
Annesley said the NRL was aware that defending teams may try to "get an advantage" from the 10-metre rule by shooting off the line at the start of sets in a bid to force an error or stall their opponents' momentum, risking the referee restarting the tackle count.