Rohan Smith claims all Super League coaches are unhappy with this from officials

Leeds Rhinos boss Rohan Smith is always one to give a frank opinion on any rugby league related topic, he is indeed a rugby league man.

He has a strong philosophy on how the game should be played and that involves a tidy and quick ruck.

This is something he has voiced frequently this season that he feels is not there at the moment in Super League often likening it to the NRL.

He again voiced this view after Leeds Rhinos’ defeat to Hull KR:

“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.”

Smith also addressed what he would like to see changed to amend this:

“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 claimed that other coaches feel the same based on a recent coach’s meeting:

“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.”