{"id":646864,"date":"2026-05-03T12:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T12:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/646864\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T12:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T12:05:14","slug":"ivan-cleary-calls-out-bunker-in-press-conference-obstruction-call-penrith-panthers-nathan-cleary-referee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/646864\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivan Cleary calls out Bunker in press conference, obstruction call, Penrith Panthers, Nathan Cleary, referee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ivan Cleary was left confused after a \u201cpretty obvious obstruction\u201d was overlooked in Penrith\u2019s win over Manly<\/a>, suggesting the NRL needs to have a more black-and-white approach to the ruling. <\/p>\n

Watch every game of every round of the NRL Premiership LIVE with no ad-breaks during play on FOX LEAGUE, available on Kayo Sports | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Panthers held on to pip the Sea Eagles on Sunday night but the victory would have been far more comfortable had it not been for a controversial Lehi Hopoate try in the second half.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Panthers halfback Nathan Cleary was sliding across in the defensive line before he seemingly had his path blocked by Clayton Faulalo. <\/p>\n

The play was allowed to resume and Tolu Koula fired what appeared to be a forward pass to Hopoate, who scored in the corner. <\/p>\n

Nathan Cleary was visibly unhappy with the call, but referee Wyatt Raymond told the Penrith co-captain he believed the obstruction did not have a bearing on the try. <\/p>\n

The Bunker supported that ruling to the shock of coach Cleary, who said it was a \u201cpretty obvious obstruction\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201c(There were) almost two lead runners actually taking out a player who\u2019s actually heading towards where the ball\u2019s going,\u201d the Panthers coach added. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve got a bit of an issue when officials are making decisions on whether it\u2019s affected the defensive line. Respectfully, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s something in their… do they learn how to do that when they\u2019re learning about refereeing? <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure about that. I don\u2019t know how you say that. I mean, you don\u2019t because it does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walsh shows his class to set up try | 00:21<\/p>\n

Both Cleary and Paul Alamoti were engaged by Manly\u2019s lead runners Faulalo and Ben Trbojevic and had they got through the defensive line untouched, it would have been a perfectly executed play from the Sea Eagles.<\/p>\n

With the timing of play Alamoti had no choice but to engage Luke Brooks out the back regardless of whether Cleary was obstructed or not.<\/p>\n

However, it is hard to argue the Panthers halfback was denied a chance to potentially deny the diving Hopoate.<\/p>\n

Either way, coach Cleary said the NRL risked entering dangerous territory if it continued to make similar subjective decisions.<\/p>\n

Foran proud despite first Manly loss | 07:35<\/p>\n

In fact, instead he warned that the league could fall into the trap of rewarding \u201cbad decisions\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly the way we defend, if you lose one of the guys on the inside it absolutely affects the rest of what\u2019s going on out there and I think it\u2019s pretty obvious that, as I said, he saw the ball, he was heading towards it,\u201d Cleary said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think either one or two blokes clearly are in the way. So in other words, he was making a good decision. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhereas there\u2019s plenty of bad decisions to get rewarded, and that\u2019s the sort of change we tried to make last year. So in this case, I would say that was a good decision but he couldn\u2019t get to where he needed to get to. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think the bigger thing is I don\u2019t think we should allow the Bunker officials to make a decision that it has affected the defensive line or it hasn\u2019t. I\u2019m just not sure how he knows that, and who teaches him that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ivan Cleary was left confused after a \u201cpretty obvious obstruction\u201d was overlooked in Penrith\u2019s win over Manly, suggesting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-646864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}