North Queensland Cowboys head coach Todd Payten has been left frustrated over a controversial call to sin bin Reuben Cotter during the club's upset win over the Sydney Roosters at magic round on Saturday evening in Brisbane.
The Cowboys, who already spent ten minutes with 12 men on the park during the first half after Matt Lodge was sin binned, were forced to go through the same treatment in the second half when Cotter was ruled to have made contact on Sam Walker before he had the ball in a try scoring situation.
A penalty try wasn't awareded, but the officials found reason to send Cotter to the sin bin.
Cotter suggested in an interview with broadcaster Fox Sports that the contact, which seemed almost simultaneous, probably shouldn't have resulted in a ten-minute sit down penalty, and his coach Payten confirmed post-game that, while not wanting to take anything away from his playing group's gritty win, will be asking questions of the NRL this week.
“I think if you slow it down like they do it is very hard to come up with the right call,” Payten said during his post-match press conference.
“At normal speed I just asked them to watch that at normal speed because if you slow it down like they did you are going to find something wrong with it.
“I'll ask some questions, but I don't want to take away from how tough and gritty we were by making too harsh a comment.”
The upset win means the Cowboys have picked up three in their last four starts, with Payten's side defying pre-season expectations to sit comfortably inside the top eight with seven wins from eleven games and all three of their byes still to come.
The first of those isn't until Round 15, with North Queensland to do battle with the South Sydney Rabbitohs, Canberra Raiders and Dolphins before then, and all of those games to be played without the injured Tom Dearden, who could be due back as early as straight after their first bye when the Cowboys travel to Christchurch to clash with the Warriors.
