{"id":776667,"date":"2026-07-03T14:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T14:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/776667\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T14:59:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T14:59:14","slug":"nrl-2026-bunker-under-fire-for-tom-jenkins-double-movement-replay-refereeing-penrith-panthers-win-over-south-sydney-rabbitohs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/776667\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL 2026: Bunker under fire for Tom Jenkins double movement, replay, refereeing, Penrith Panthers win over South Sydney Rabbitohs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Panthers may have ran away big winners on Friday night but one contentious moment, which even drew the ire of a Penrith great, has come into the spotlight. <\/p>\n

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Penrith looked on track to make a sloppy South Sydney pay for an error-riddled second half and ended up doing just that in the end, claiming a crucial 36-14 win<\/a> without their Origin stars.<\/p>\n

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Tom Jenkins scored a hat-trick in the win, although there was controversy surrounding his second try and for more than one reason.<\/p>\n

Firstly, the Bunker appeared to be more concerned with the put-down and it was hardly convincing, although a later angle seemed to show Jenkins did ground the ball cleanly.<\/p>\n

What the Bunker didn\u2019t pay much attention to, at least on the surface, was the potential for a double movement and for a number of NRL greats, including Penrith legend Greg Alexander, it wasn\u2019t even a question.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe arm carrying the ball touches the ground and it\u2019s not momentum that gets him into the in-goal. It\u2019s the fact he was able to reach out. It\u2019s great skill… but it wasn\u2019t a try because his arm hit the ground and had defenders on him,\u201d Alexander said on Fox League.<\/p>\n

Braith Anasta, meanwhile, was at a loss that the Bunker seemed to not even consider the possibility of a double movement and instead skipped straight to the grounding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a double movement in the rules of our game… it\u2019s a great effort but the right arm touches the ground, the South Sydney team stops him and then he promotes the ball,\u201d Anasta said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bunker spent how long on this and they didn\u2019t even mention it once. They didn\u2019t even look for it… to me in the rules of the game that\u2019s a double movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Friday\u2019s game ended a blowout, the contest was well and truly still in the balance when the Jenkins try was awarded with Penrith pushing out to a 14-point lead as a result.<\/p>\n

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The NRL\u2019s Laws and Interpretation document states that a try will be awarded if \u201ca tackled player\u2019s momentum carries him into the opponents\u2019 in-goal where he grounds the ball even if the ball has first touched the ground in the field of play\u201d. <\/p>\n

However, momentum did not appear to be the contributing factor to Jenkins getting the ball over the try-line and according to Michael Ennis, the Bunker should not have even got to the point where the grounding was being adjudicated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t have got to that. The moment he was tackled and had defenders on him and his arm hit the ground, it\u2019s end of story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To only further illustrate how contentious the call was, Alexander pointed to a disallowed try earlier in the year where Salesi Foketi was denied by the Bunker against the Dolphins.<\/p>\n

Cody responds to brain snap | 03:30<\/p>\n

On that occasion, Francis Molo had a hand on Foketi when his ball-carrying arm hit the ground. <\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, he was still moving,\u201d Alexander added, suggesting that was even more likely to be awarded a try given momentum was in Foketi\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n

Instead, it was taken off the board to the confusion of Anasta.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s a no try, how is this a try?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to justify.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Panthers may have ran away big winners on Friday night but one contentious moment, which even drew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-776667","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\/776667","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=776667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}