Careful there boof. I know quite a few old refs and most of them are ex-cops who would eat you for breakfast even now. One of my current golfing mates was a FG ref in the 70's and he's a good bloke as well. By all means argue that they got decisions wrong but they have all spent their life actually doing something in league not reading about it and whinging.
Just like a politician.......
Fair call Oats. (Lovely area, I grew up there, Letitia street, shame about it these days)
Just playing mate. All good. Yep Letitia is great if you like home units...
The funny part is if you watch the next set the dogs are even more offside than Fine was.... Its got corruption written all over it.
The prick has an ego, I can’t stand his over animated refereeing . He was an overrated journeyman player back in the day, and is now animated dickhead with a whistle in his mouth .
You make a decent argument but all players have to do is put one foot on the line and he didn't. Sure he might of been offside 50cm but the onus is on the players. If Fine had a foot on the line I doubt he would have had less of an advantage. It's attention to detail and inexcusable penalties like this that can hurt any team. Sometimes we have to stop blaming the refs for rules that have always been there, it's just that this year they are being enforced more than previous.
The complaint isnt that it wasnt a penalty. It was. He was offside. The complaint is he got binned when cowboys actually had already given away more penalties near the line at the other end before that, and no action was taken then
Never believed it’s an issue.
If an investigation ever happens the current crop of referees would find themselves under buses in about 2 minutes and anyone higher up would just walk away unmarred by it. I'd guarantee it.
the evidence of the time would indicate your mate was wrong. There have never been more than 1 or 2 teams before this year in any given year who went for the 2 points regularly as their first scoring option. Bennett and Bellamy are the only coaches who regularly used that option back then. We certainly didn't.
I haven't researched the stats in regards to this, but my mate assured me that before Tandy and the small group of players implicated in the betting scandal got caught out that he was making good money regularly by backing goal kickers to score first points. Because the refs were giving out penalties in prime goal kicking positions before a try had been scored frequently enough that he thought it was more than coincidental. He said it wasn't foolproof because plenty of times teams would score early points before the penalty could be given away, but he told me he paid about 1/2 of his Pajero off using this betting strategy and that after Tandy was crucified in the media the strategy no longer worked. My friend is pretty honest and I have no reason to think he was making this up. He had no logical reason to make it up nor is he inclined to conspiracy theories.
