Our game is so superior to that in the NRL that there is no need to follow their innovations.

As our game continually shows it's dominance and superiority it is the Aussies who should be following any innovations we come up with to improve it further, otherwise we will just embarrass them again come world cup time

Do you mean the ability to lose on a regular basis

Yeah I noticed how much they talk to the ref after buying one of those gimmicky ear pices so you can listen to the ref's decisions. They must've put the linesman on another frequency

I think thats a load of old crap Teebs.

Have you seen any NRL this season? Its a step above the SL as far as the speed goes and the way the game has changed is IMO for the good. Manly cant compete anymore because they are too used to "controling" the ruck. Now the players are penalised for laying on for more than a second and the more skillful teams are winning instead of the best wrestlers.

All of which every other ref in the world has managed to achieve without having a second red on the pitch. It was a problem peculiar to NRL - and a 'solution' peculiar (in all senses of the word) to the NRL.

Rather than admitting they couldn't cope, did Oz refs not consider simply doing their job?

Incredibly dubious over the 2 ref rules in the NRL until I saw it. Would like to see it here now.

Would like to see some competent touch judges though...

Introducing a second ref has nothing to do with referees being incompetent or unwilling to 'do their job'.

It's tough to do it, not impossible by any stretch, but as we were seeing on a regular basis modern, fulltime and well-coached professional players are becoming increasingly adroit at finding ways of slowing play down. Similarly, I've lost track of how many times I've seen a dud call this year when the ball comes lose - both when a ball is removed but isn't penalised and also when the tackled player loses control yet the defender is penalised.

It has nothing to do with incompetence - it's just a very hard thing to police. The refs will never get it right all the time and indeed with one ref will continue to get it wrong in what I'd assume to be equal amounts as they are now - unless they are assisted. Incompetence isn't what restricts them from making the correct call - merely watching an event take place more than 10 metres away, often obstructed by at least 2 players bodies with at least one of the players often trying to 'con' the ref into a wrong decision is what allows these dud calls.

I called for an introduction of a second ref 12/18 months ago, on this very board I believe, as I could see it was becoming difficult to police the ruck area. It's pleasing to hear the NRL experiment has been a positive one though I've only the contributors on this board to corroborate that.

To me its common sense. Why not give as much assistance to the guy in the middle as you can? It doesn't detract from the game, so why not? What possible negative can there be? The Ruck Ref has a minor role to play, in the overall scheme of things so what is the problem? All the arguments against could also have been, and probably were, levied against the introduction of the video ref. I'd like to think that argument has been won and put to bed.

so too, in time, will this argument. I think!

finally, there is no real excuse in this day and age for RL supporters to not know that Refs and TJ's do communicate. The TJ's dont need to raise their flag to communicate with the ref and they do communicate frequently. To suggest otherwise renders you as an idiot. In my opinion of course! But with so much evidence (you can SEE them talking on the TV coverage FFS!) available you should know they are already communicating. What was that advert recently which said only a small percentage of communication was verbal? Hand signals, body poistioning, flag movement plus the above-mentioned verbal communication are all methods of communication, which tells me these guys are already being as supportive as they can be. And no, things which they get wrong are not evidence these guys aren't communicating already - that's just evidence that they miss things, or get things wrong from time to time, or interpret things differentyly (or maybe just that the 'punter' is wrong on this occasion). It certainy doesn't mean they are not communicating...

and we've gone back to dummy half run, dummy half run, dummy half run, penalty, dummy half run, try

sorry but that is hardly entertaining. If you are going to allow very fast play of the balls then you have to allow more leniency at marker and offside.

its a good point you make. But surely that's just down to the timing of how long the ruck ref is allowing play to be slowed? If it's so fast as to allow the sort of unimaginative play as you describe, then maybe we can tweak it slightly so that defenders can 'stabilise' a bit longer? This will give them enough time to form a reasonable marker defence without allowing all the ruck infringements which are a nightmare for the ref to police standing back in the line.

I dont think its an argument against having two refs though, is it?

A sad day when two refs arrive in the Super League. We'll have one game split into two. With the top tier doing their own thing and the rest being officated in a totally different way. Where are all these extra officals going to come from?