Australian Rugby League Commissioner Peter V'landys has revealed that moves to bring consistency to the NRL's judicial findings are currently on the horizon.
When speaking to The Daily Telegraph,ย V'landys claimed that the operating review into the current system for grading and punishing foul play was nearing an end.
And with an eye cast across other codes to alleviate confusion and anger over both fines and suspensions, the Racing New South Wales board member believed quality headway had been made.
At the present, ARL commission members Gary Weiss, Tony McGrath and Balmain legend Wayne Pearce have been collaborating with heads at NRL HQ to iron out kinks in a system that had fans scratching their heads last season.
In delineating the processes that the combined parties were currently undertaking, V'landys also claimed that almost every facet of the present structure required updating.
โAny good corporation or organisation always reviews its procedures and thatโs exactly what weโre doing,โ he said.
โWeโve got input from a lot of people. We want to make sure weโve got the best practice model available.
โLooking at it, we probably donโt [have the best model]. Everything can be improved and we just want best practice. We want to make it fair to all parties. We want to make it as fair as possible to players, clubs and everyone else. We are looking at other codes and sports and how they do it to ensure weโve got the best system in place.โ
V'landys was also open in stating that he held a desire to see the updates presided over by an independent panel rather than the previous system which was routinely headed by former players.
โIโd like to see it as independent as possible,โ the league boss continued.
โWhen a player is given a penalty it should be done independently. Andrew Abdo is in favour of that as well. It takes up a lot of his time that could be better spent in commercial areas.
โThe appeals process should be looked at โ a player should have more opportunity to appeal. We may look at the NRL just acting as prosecutors as opposed to the ยญdecision makers on penalties.
โThere can be perceptions around the judiciary that may not be correct so we want to make it as independent as possible. All weโre trying to do is get best practice. We want to rid the system of perceptions of conflict. Itโs going to be as independent as possible.โ
Given every facet of the contemporary system is being analysed, a date on which this new order will be implemented is yet to have been announced.
However, Travis Meyn ofย The Daily Telegraphย noted that with progress being made behind closed doors, fans could well see grading and ruling updates being made from Round 1 of the upcoming NRL season.
The league's latest campaign is set to kick off in Penrith on Thursday, March 10 when Manly travels to face the reigning premiers at BlueBet Stadium.
This is interesting. This area has been in need of reform for years. Whether the punishments are too much or little as long as it’s consistent.
Part of the reason why people perceive inconsistency is that they do not know the rules that are being applied.
One thing the review could do, which would be useful, is to rewrite the rules regarding punishments in plain English, rather than legalese, and publish it on its website.
In fact, the website would be a very appropriate place to post a downloadable copy of the full set of rules. (If you tell me it is already there, then I’ll retort that the NRL’s website could benefit from a clean up.)
Hi Cynic,
Those rules are published and so are the grading applied. I’ve found the easiest way to find these are to google what you want and see if it comes up. Trying to find it on the NRL site is quite hard.
https://www.nrl.com/siteassets/operations/documentation/nrl_laws_interpretations_2020.pdf
https://www.nrl.com/operations/the-game/judiciary-code/
My qualm around inconsistency is the very different grading they apply to the same event. I respect they are human so it won’t be exact every time but, on occasion, the variations are crazy.