NRL head of football Graham Annersley has stated the NRL will examine the captain's challenge law in the off-season after an incident with Parramatta Eels' captain Clint Gutherson in Round 23.
In Parramatta's clash with the Cowboys on Saturday, Gutherson appeared to deliberately infringe North Queensland Valentine Holmes in order to mount a challenge on the referee's call of held.
Despite Gutherson challenging for a knock-on against Holmes, the NRL Bunker instead spotted the Cowboys winger pushing Eels hooker Joey Lussick and overturned the decision, gifting Parramatta possession and consequently a try.
Annesley used his Monday footy briefing to mention he is fine with how the system is operating but still didn't rule out some tweaks over the off-season.
"These are new rules, they’ve only been in play for a couple of seasons, and I think that we need to review how they’re operating," he said.
"As time passes, sometimes there are parts of a rule where you think, ‘We probably need to tweak that a little bit’.
"But are they operating as they are currently allowed to operate under the rules? Yeah, I think that they are.
"Whether we need to change that or not is something that we need to look at at the end of the season.
"I think there will always be an opportunity to use the rules to your own advantage at times as long as that's not being abused.
"And I think we have to remember the overriding intention of captain’s challenges is to try and get decisions right.
"We need to find that happy balance between allowing players to challenge if they think the referee’s got a decision wrong, but then not having the scope so wide that we're going back and challenging things that we've moved on from, for example.
"If the footage from the Bunker is inconclusive, it doesn't change the decision but you don't lose your challenge.
"I think that's probably perfectly reasonable. Now some people would say, 'Well, if your challenge doesn't show that you were right in your challenge, then you should lose it anyway'."
The 'captain's challenge' rule was introduced at the beginning of season 2020, with trials during pre-season of that year proving fruitful.
There was a mixed response to the implementation of the rule, with pundits initially critiquing the rule for attempting to achieve perfection in the imperfect environment that is the rugby league.
Fans will be waiting with bated breath to see whether the rule has any further major complications in the remaining action of season 2021, with two rounds to go until finals.
