{"id":899993,"date":"2026-09-21T11:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T11:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/899993\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T11:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T11:08:12","slug":"nrl-set-to-axe-referee-ashley-klein-after-controversial-semifinal-ending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/899993\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL set to axe referee Ashley Klein after controversial semifinal ending"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tell us about your experience. <\/p>\n

The NRL is reportedly set to axe top referee Ashley Klein for the preliminary finals after admitting the Warriors were wrongly denied a crucial late penalty in their 12-10 semifinal loss to Newcastle.<\/p>\n

NRL officials today confirmed the Warriors should have been awarded a penalty for an escort infringement by the Knights’ Tyson Frizell with a minute left in yesterday’s Eden Park thriller.<\/p>\n

Had the penalty been awarded, the Warriors would have had the chance to level at 12-12 via a penalty goal from just to the side of the posts and send the match to extra time.<\/p>\n

NRL investigating Eden Park incident<\/a><\/p>\n

The NRL is threatening to ban spectators who threw projectiles at referee Ashley Klein, with the league’s integrity unit investigating the aftermath of Sunday’s semifinal in Auckland.<\/p>\n

But the call was instead missed on the field, with the bunker unable to review the play, despite a stoppage for an injury soon afterwards.<\/p>\n

A comprehensive NRL review of Newcastle’s 12-10 semifinal did, however, back the bunker over two other contentious calls.<\/p>\n

First, it was deemed that bunker official Chris Butler was right to rule that Warriors centre Ali Leiataua got a thumb to a ball before it went to ground late in the match.<\/p>\n

The NRL also supported the bunker’s decision to stick with the on-field call of a strip against Warrior Te Maire Martin.<\/p>\n

But it is the non-call on Frizell that will annoy the Warriors most.<\/p>\n

The Newcastle veteran appeared to get in the way of Leka Halasima as he chased through on a kick in the Warriors’ last attacking raid.<\/p>\n

Given the seconds that would have come off the clock while the Warriors lined up the shot, there would probably not have been time for a restart.<\/p>\n

“I thought they were trying to find ways to take it off us,” Warriors coach Andrew Webster said after the game.<\/p>\n

Projectiles thrown at ref as Knights win<\/a><\/p>\n

Projectiles have been thrown at the NRL refereeing crew following Newcastle’s upset semifinal win over the New Zealand Warriors.<\/p>\n

“The last one, two points would have drawn the game, he is going across Leka, pretending to try and catch the ball which they’ve told us you can’t do.”<\/p>\n

AAP understands Klein will pay for the error by losing his spot in the preliminary finals, with Grant Atkins or Gerard Sutton likely to be called up.<\/p>\n

Klein has overseen every game of the past five State of Origin series and two of the last four grand finals.<\/p>\n

He had been expected to referee last year’s decider, before losing out to Atkins following 18 penalties in a Melbourne-Cronulla preliminary final.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the NRL have threatened bans for fans who threw projectiles at Klein as he walked off Eden Park on Sunday night.<\/p>\n

Vision showed a mass of bottles and rubbish being thrown at the long-time official, with Warriors great Shaun Johnson labelling the fans’ behaviour “embarrassing”.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tell us about your experience. The NRL is reportedly set to axe top referee Ashley Klein for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[54654,64,63,40038,158,22408,74197,468464,85],"class_list":["post-899993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ashley-klein","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-eden-park","tag-nrl","tag-nrl-grand-final","tag-preliminary-finals","tag-ref-abuse","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899993","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=899993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}