“I’m not complaining but…” – Rohan Smith gives his honest view of officiating in Super League

Leeds Rhinos boss Rohan Smith has always been vocal about the officiating in Super League.

Smith never takes aims his criticism at a specific official, rather the approach the Super League officials are told to take.

This often centres around the ruck. Smith would prefer a neater ruck to prevent 50/50 calls being created when a player is all over an attacker resulting in a dropped ball and either a penalty or a knock on.

Smith would also prefer the game to be quicker as this all feeds into his coaching philosophy. It is no secret Leeds may just be the best team when the ruck is clean and quick.

Speaking after Leeds’ defeat to Hull KR, Smith gave his honest assessment of the officiating in Super League even expressing sympathy for them.

“It must be so difficult to referee when the general feedback is, and I’m not complaining.

“I’m a bit like Paul [Rowley] last week. That wasn’t the reason for tonight, but, you know, last night, that was a strip, you know, the bloke on the ground was all over the ball, wasn’t he, and the result of the game was determined by that potentially, so there’s just that many of them that are messy and there’s a reluctance to penalise messy early in the game.

“And then it just becomes the game’s on the line, like no one wants to give a penalty there. And I actually don’t know if that one should have been a penalty or whether it was just an untidy play of the ball, but there’s a lot of untidy play of the balls, which there has been all year in every game I’ve watched and it must be really difficult to adjudicate on that because it’s messy it’s ugly where in other games I watch from other competitions it’s much clearer about is it a knock on is it a penalty it’s much easier.”

When asked how the officiating could change, Smith stated:

“Penalise indiscretions without fear of racking up the penalty count. That’s the easy way because then defenders stop doing things because they’re worried about getting penalised. Where at the moment there’s a tendency that you just keep doing it and they won’t keep blowing them.

“Again, I’m generalising for the season there, I’m not complaining about tonight. We had chances to win, I thought we competed hard, I thought we had the better of the energy battle but we didn’t execute and that was the reason why we didn’t win tonight.”

He also acknowledged that other coaches agree:

“The last coaches meeting we went to, it was pretty much all the coaches said the ruck was untidy, but since that moment, I’m not aware of any shift or change of angle in the way it’s officiated.”