Rohan Smith wants change to way referees officiate in Super League

Leeds Rhinos boss Rohan Smith is never one to shy away from an opportunity to give his opinion on things especially when it comes to officiating.

The Rhinos boss is never one to single out an official or indeed blame them for a result, but Smith has a very clear philosophy on how rugby league should look.

Smith is in favour of a tidy ruck and a quicker game. We can see this in the way Leeds play.

They are a fast paced team and look their best on the back of a clean and quick ruck.

After Leeds’ defeat to Hull KR, Smith again highlighted the messiness of the ruck:

“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.”

He did also reveal what he would like to see changed to amend this issue:

“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.”