Rohan Smith suggests game deciding decision in Super League clash was wrong

Whether in the game between Leeds Rhinos and Salford Red Devils, the clash between Castleford Tigers and Leigh Leopards, St Helens and Catalans Dragons or indeed Leeds’ defeat to Hull KR on Friday, officials appear to be creeping more and more into the conversation.

Sadly we have seen many fans feel that they have lost a game solely because of an official.

That wasn’t the case for Leeds after they lost to Hull KR in golden point and Rohan Smith didn’t argue that point though he did note the “critical calls” in the game.

He did however suggest that St Helens lost to Catalans on the back of a refereeing decision suggesting Romain Navarrete should have been penalised for a strip late in the game on Thursday.

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

“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 suggested what could change to prevent these problems going forward:

“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.

“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.”