RFL disciplinary chief explains decisions on controversial Liam Knight and Lewis Murphy incidents

Paul Cullen has moved to explain the perceived disparity between match officials and the match review panel when it comes to Super League disciplinary decisions.

Cullen leads the match review panel and he was one of the key figures in attendance at an RFL media briefing on Wednesday morning alongside head of match officials Phil Bentham and RFL CEO Tony Sutton. As such, the former Warrington Wolves and Widnes Vikings head coach was quizzed on a number of issues and incidents that have cropped up over the season, with the major one being the difference in decisions between match officials and the disciplinary panel, who meet every Monday morning to assess the weekend’s action.

This season there have been several occasions where players who have been sin-binned or sent off during games have not been charged by the MRP. The likes of Liam Knight and Sauaso Sue have been sent off in recent weeks by on-field match officials for making contact with the head.

However, on both occasions disciplinary have opted not to take any further action. The same occurred after Lewis Murphy’s controversial yellow card at Magic against Leeds Rhinos, too.

Cullen was quick to stress that their lack of action doesn’t mean an error has been made, though, insisting on those occasions they felt the on-field sanction was sufficient punishment.

Super League disciplinary decisions explained

“I’d like to start as I always do by saying that the hardest job by far in the game is match officials,” he said in the meeting. “The referee in charge, the video referee being asked his opinion under pressure and Phil’s job managing the whole of process.

“We use an analogy in MRP, the three threes. The referee has an average three seconds, the video referee on average around 30 seconds and the MRP in the cold light of day about 30 minutes. There’s bandwidth.

“I’m quite comfortable that a referee can make a decision in the heat of the game, the video referee can have 30 seconds to make it on his own. We have five people plus the compliance manager and 30 minutes every Monday morning. If we’re not completely aligned, there’s a good answer for that, the match review panel have got far more time and facilities.

“Previously the MRP had no access to a sin-bin sufficient or a red card sufficient in the grading process. If you look at St Helens-Leeds for the high jump, the referee and video referee made the decision to sin bin the player, Monday morning we agreed and went sin bin sufficient. The communication needs to be clearer but we agreed with the match officials.

“When that comes through the process it’s read as there’s a disparity between match officials and match review. There isn’t, we all agreed it’s misconduct of some description. We were happy it stayed at sin bin sufficient and we didn’t think it needed a grade adding to that sanction.

“The send off at Magic for Liam Knight, we thought he flies out the line recklessly, he makes contact with the head indirectly and putting the vast majority of the force through the body. The player then gets up of his own accord and gets involved in a melee and the medical staff leave him on the field. So we went send off sufficient.”

Cullen did concede that a better job could be done in terms of communicating and clarifying their Super League disciplinary decisions.

“We’ve dropped to the relevant minutes and not the entire minutes so this year we now have send off sufficient and yellow card sufficient within our armoury,” he said. “People can see the player has been sanctioned because he left the field and he’s missed the game.

“Making that really, really clear will allow some, not all, to see there has been a sanction, sin bin sufficient is a sanction. We all need to be a little clearer with how we put that information out and also how that information is portrayed to the general public.”