Another week of hip drop tackles and mixed messages from referees over their punishments has seen the NRL's head of football Graham Annesley forced to jump to the defence of the officiating team.
Things came to a head on Friday evening when three hip drop tackles ultimately came up with different results in Darwin during the Broncos' victory over the Parramatta Eels.
J'maine Hopgood and Ezra Mam were both sent to the sin bin, while Brisbane Broncos' prop Payne Haas found himself able to stay on the field.
Despite that, Haas and Mam were both given Grade 2 charges by the NRL's match review committee - meaning they will spend a week each on the sideline - while Hopgood escaped with a fine.
Annesley said the referees didn't make their decision based on the fact Mam was already in the sin bin when Haas' tackle was made, while also stating the match review committee could find a different verdict due to the fact they could spend 'hours' reviewing a tackle, instead of 60 seconds that the referee and bunker officials have during a game.
โThere is action taken by the match official based on their instantaneous assessment of what has taken place,โ Annesley said during his weekly footy briefing on Monday at NRL HQ.
โThe match review committee can take hours to go through in great detail to determine exactly what happened.
โIt's impossible for the match official (to do the same) in literally 60 seconds.
โIn an ideal world, of course, but we're not working in an ideal environment, we're working in the spur of the moment.
โThe referees would not be making their decision based on how many players are on the field.
โIf it requires a player being sent to the sin bin or being sent off, referees have demonstrated over a long period of time that they will do that, they're not going to wimp out of a decision.
โThey have to make an assessment and they make that assessment to the best of their ability based on the information they have.โ
There have been strong suggestions asserted against the NRL this year that a crackdown is in place over hip drop tackles, in much the same way the game has seen crackdowns in recent seasons over crusher tackles and high shots.
Annesley said nothing of the sort was occurring though.
Rather, he suggested it's a tackle the NRL have been attempting to stamp out for some time, and the onus is on coaches to get it out of the game.
โThis has been an ongoing attempt to get this type of tackle out of the game,โ Annesely said.
โIn the same way the match-review committee and the NRL over decades now have attempted to rid the game of other actions that are dangerous to players.
โI'm talking about high tackles, spear tackles, punching, we don't see off the ball incidents now as much as we used to see.
โAll of these things have been effectively addressed, not necessarily completely eliminated, but we need to see the same thing happening with hip drops because at the moment all of the data is heading in the wrong direction.
โIt's not because we're taking any closer look at these incidents, they just keep happening.
โThe referees can't send players to the sin bin if the incident doesn't happen. There's a difference between frustration and confusion. It's not confusing to understand it.โ
At the heart of the debate around the hip drop tackle has been consistency from officials, and the understanding of exactly what a hip drop tackle is.
It's a subject which is raised in most, if not all coaches press conferences, and one coaches seem to take a differing view on, with some suggesting they are almost impossible to avoid.
South Sydney coach Jason Demetriou said just a fortnight ago however that they aren't being coached at training, and teammates would be frustrated should they occur against each other outside of match day, so he couldn't understand how they were creeping into the game.
Zero Tackle analysis at the end of Round 7 showed charges, fines and suspensions are up almost two-fold on what they were at the same point last year.
