It’s back.
The NRL’s controversial disruptor rule has reared its ugly head once again after the Sydney Roosters were denied a try in Thursday night’s thrilling win over the Penrith Panthers.
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The Roosters had a chance to go two tries ahead of the Panthers when Robert Toia dived on the loose ball as Tom Jenkins put the ball down under pressure from Mark Nawaqanitawase.
However, the try was taken off the board by the Bunker after Nawaqanitawase was ruled to have obstructed Jenkins mid-air.
A flying Nawaqanitawase flung out an arm and was neither trying to catch the ball or bat it back for a teammate.
The disruptor rule had been the subject of much debate earlier in the year, with the NRL admitting in April that two controversial calls were incorrect.
It came after Roosters coach Trent Robinson declared the rule had “gone too far” and while head of football Graham Annesley confirmed there would be no change to disruptors at the time, the rule seemed to have faded into the background.
That was until Thursday night when, as Fox League’s Andrew Voss so creatively put it, it “poked its head out after 10 years in hibernation like a galapagos tortoise”.
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“It’s back… I swear I have seen 20, maybe more, that we just moved on from,” he added.
The decision may have been the correct one by the letter of the law, but it seemed to catch most people — including Roosters skipper Daly Cherry-Evans — by surprise.
“You can’t tell me their infringement is going to be let go because we score a try,” Cherry-Evans argued.
Referee Adam Gee, however, later explained that while the first infringement was an escort on Izack Tago, Nawaqanitawase was also guilty of a disruptor and therefore a penalty to the Roosters would suffice.
That explanation may not go down well with Robinson, with the Roosters coach telling reporters post-game he would “ask some questions” of the on-field officiating.
“Pretty clearly you’re not allowed to go up with one arm and miss the ball,” Robinson said.
“So Ash (Klein in the Bunker) has ruled on that, which is clearly the rule. But then when you put the one before it, the reason he went up with one arm was because he got illegally escorted off the ball in a try scoring position.
“I think everybody thinks it should have been a try, but I’ll be interested. I know that you can’t go up and miss with one hand, but it was quite clear why.
“There’ll be some questions. I need to ask some questions out of tonight. Not so much the video ref, more the on field.
“I need to get some interpretations about language and stuff from tonight.”