PopTart wrote:I watched it and he showed a lot of class.
However, it is not a harsh decision. It was absolutely, without doubt, an incorrect decision......which changed the game.
I think that's the best he could've done.... Not sure players can go onto the touch screen and slag off an official's decisions, so calling it harsh wax being diplomatic I think.... As he went on to explain why it WAS an incorrect decision, without saying it on so many words.
Certainly changed the swing. Whether it'd have changed the overall result we'll never know.
It's difficult to get a black and white ruling over. You need to run in numbers to stand up defenders and the "unused" runners have to end up somewhere.
Defenders, when they're caught out of position as mcmeeken was, will generally go to a lead runner and stick their arms out for a penalty. It's just a desperate act. There's not a player who wouldn't/doesn't do that, and if you watch tries on the super league show, a defender almost always is appealing for something.
That being said, regardless of where tupou ended up, if they'd have run it on for 3 seconds they'd have seen that mcmeeken was never going to make up the lost ground, whether he was impeded or not.
It was pretty much the only play all night where Wakefield set up and exposed a problem in castlefords defence, and ironically they did it pretty much perfectly.