Sky Sports pundit and ex-St Helens man Jon Wilkin slams gamesmanship in Toulouse Olympique-Hull KR clash

There seems to be an element of so called ‘playacting’ creeping into the game of rugby league at present.

From milking penalties to calling for cards to be given to the opposition, Super League and the rest of the sport in general would be a lot better without such issues.

Last night, Hull KR took on Toulouse Olympique at Craven Park which was broadcast live on Sky Sports and there was one incident that rankled commentators and pundits alike.

Toulouse’s Romain Navarrete went down just after the hour clutching his neck as the Toulouse trainer ran onto the pitch with the incident being shown on a replay on the Sky Sports screen.

That left Rovers fans booing loudly at the seemingly innocuous tackle as Navarrete continued to wince in pain.

For Sky Sports pundit Jon Wilkin, however, he believed that the French prop had created that situation himself and that he was trying ‘to milk’ a penalty from referee Liam Moore, citing the need to understand why players are doing this.

“We need to understand as a game why this has happened,” Wilkin said.

“He has created that situation and if we are being brutally honest he is trying to milk a penalty.

“He knows the time of the game and as a defender there is nowhere to go.”

Of course, there has been a number of issues with ‘playacting’ in recent months with St Helens’ Sione Mata’utia banned for a number of games after lifting Huddersfield Giants man Danny Levi off the floor when the latter was prone, appearing to suffer from injury.

At the time, Saints boss Kristian Woolf wanted to see a greater clampdown on the issue.

“We’ve got to have a look at how we get situations out of our game – that is playacting to try and get results especially on tv games.

“He (Sione) knows there is no foul play and the player is playing for a penalty and that is frustrating the players.

“We need to look at how we get that out of our game. It is an unnecessary stoppage. I’m not condoning Sione’s actions but the reality is, the person who is trying to bend the rules leads to that situation and gets rewarded for that and that’s not what we want to see.”

It is a major point of debate that is creeping in to rugby league, but, credit must go to referee Liam Moore last night who called for play on instead of penalising Hull KR for the tackle.