Rugby league great and SEN’s Scott Sattler has thrown his support behind NRL head of football Graham Annesley and his weekly football briefing.
Annesley holds a weekly press conference for the media in which he analyses and critiques the contentious officiating decisions of the week. After there were several refereeing howlers in Round 23, critics of the briefing once again asked why there was a need for Annesley’s conference.
However, Sattler has leapt to the defence of Annesley and has given him credit for fronting the media every week despite the increased scrutiny.
“I love it,” Sattler declared on SENQ.
“It does feel pretty empty if you’re a club on the receiving end of a bad call.
“For so many years, there has been something that has gone wrong with the game and in years gone by, everyone has hid in their offices and no one has been held accountable.
“No one has been willing to be accountable for it but I like that Graham Annesley is willing to turn up every Monday.
“We all look for someone to blame. We don’t know who to blame but we look for someone.
“I take my hat off to a man who fronts up to the rugby league media and rugby league community and says that we (the officials) got some things wrong.
“There are so many moving parts and no one is ever going to be perfect.
“I like the explanation behind some of the decisions (and) it takes someone like Annesley to say what the interpretation is.
“I’m a fan of it.”
The two biggest howlers over the weekend was the forward pass from Jack Wighton to Sebastian Kris which resulted in a Canberra try with the Raiders ultimately winning 22-18 over the Tigers.
The second was St George Illawarra’s Jacob Liddle being penalised for a loose carry despite an obvious strip which would’ve put the Dragons in a commanding 26-10 lead over Parramatta.
SENQ’s Ben Davis questioned whether clubs would want to know if the referee made a mistake.
“It’s that age-old question of do you want to know,” Davis said on SENQ.
“Even though we can’t take it back and it will change nothing, do you want to know?
“As humans, we do want to know.
“However, it’s every Monday where you want to know yet there’s nothing that’s going to change it.”