I wouldn't call it carnage.

Not playing the ball with the foot started about 20 years ago, by wigan if I remember correctly, and has been pretty much ignored by the officials ever since.

Tend to agree with Bumpy on his suggestions (and agreed with the thrust of McDermott's rant). The first few weeks of 2018 would be fun if this was policed properly though.

I remember years ago when interference started getting silly. The RFL intervened and it was a penalty every time for a while until players learnt not to do it. Then the refs relaxed and the players reverted to laying on etc knowing they could get away with it, which they still do.

Bottom line is that the refereeing set up isn't fit for purpose - having Ganson in charge doesn't exactly help either

Anybody tuning into the NRL on Freesports this week will have noticed a MASSIVE difference.

Game much quicker, less wrestling on the ground, very few hands in delaying PTB - far more of a spectacle where frankly cheating has been eliminated - two reasons:-
1).

contd,,

1). Absolute clarity from the top about what is accepted, I suggest all clubs properly advised by governing body & firmly enforced.
2). Two refs just has to be the way forward - one polices the ten metre, the other the PTB. This was announced by SL a couple of years ago but never happened - think it was the cost ? coupled with lack of suitable candidates.
All SL players are naturally pushing the barrier & seeking to gain advantage - for the good of the game it has to be sorted. Fully agree with BMaC - if he can't explain what dominant or submissive mean then what chance have the players, the refs orus long suffering fans ???

But the problem is that mcdermott and all of the other coaches are training their players week in, week out to slow down the PTB then when an opponent gets the drop on them he complains. washbrook clearly did what he did on Thursday on purpose 'but if the attacking player wasn't getting up next to him while he was trying to play the ball then he wouldn't have been able to do it. For me, the issue is with the defenders, not the attacking player. if you're still in the way then you should be penalised.

Get rid of the 3 and 4 men tackles, the wrestling, the pulling the man to the floor after held has been called and everything else aimed at slowing down the opposition attack and the game would be much better for it

Again, you don't need two refs in your scenario, the touch judge polices the 10m, just as he/she should police the offside line for scrums but currently don't even do that either properly. In fact a touch judge has a far better view as he's looking down one line in one direction so players offside are easy to see.
The referee doesn't even need to stand 10m away just as referees in the past didn't have to always stand the 5 or 10 and were often found close to the PTB when it got a bit messy. Players respected the offside line far more then and also didn't give the ref even a quarter of the lip they do now. start pinging whiners 10m every time they open their gob and some teams would never leave their own 20 when you factor in their general match tactics. jesus if players like Wellens, Tomkins and Maguire acted as they did BITD, goalkickers of the era would just be laughing with attempt after attempt at goal for 2 without ever having to worry the opposition would get a sniff unless they played fairly and didn't gob off to the ref.
kick off, laying on/messy play the ball, penalty, offside at 1st PTB, penalty, gob off, marched another 10, kick for goal, rinse and repeat.

We can enforce the rules without sanitising or slowing the game down, it just needs the coaches, the players and more importantly the officials to do what they should all be doing.

Exactly, completely agree, makes me laugh people who don't normally watch the NRL didn't even realize that 2 refs are on the pitch! Quite clearly works, and the simplest solution imo