8 May 2012

Furner fined $10k

| johnboy
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The NRL have announced a $10,000 fine for Raiders coach David Furner:

The breach notice follows comments Mr Furner made questioning the impartiality of the referees, specifically: “I don’t think anyone expected us to come here and win, and maybe not them.”

The NRL has clear guidelines in relation to coaches commenting on referees that allow every opportunity to question and even criticise individual decisions or a general refereeing performance.

These guidelines, however, do not permit coaches, officials, or players to question the integrity of a referee or accuse officials of bias.

“Coaches have the right to criticise a referee’s performance and to express their views but questioning a match official’s integrity is unacceptable,” ARL Commission General Manager of Football Operations, Mr Nathan McGuirk, said today.

“There was a clear inference in Mr Furner’s comments that the match officials had a pre-determined view of the result of the game.”

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To a casual observer (such as moi), it is plain that most NRL games are refereed by people who (a) make mistakes. (b) favour high profile teams over the less popular and (c) are heavily swayed by crowd opinion. It’s ridiculous that anyone – including David Furner – could be given $10k worth of shut up for stating the bleeding obvious.

None of this means the NRL refs are bent; it’s just that they make critical errors and the game is not big enough to admit that they do. The highly-trained players make mistakes – they miss tackles, knock on, pass the ball into touch etc. The refs are only human and they get it wrong too. TV coverage with multiple angles shows up the mistakes as never before, but they’ve always been there.

On the other hand, NRL refs do not appear to be the delay-loving whistleblowing showponies and pedants who populate rugby union refereeing and whose judgement calls are at least as doubtful (Will an Oz team ever get a fair run from a South African ref? Will the Brumbies/Rebels/Force/Reds ever get a fair go from a NSW ref? Will the minor players – touch judges and TMOs – ever resist imposing their preferences on the way they do their work?). Fix the rugby refs and the game would work.

There’s no other sport in the world that rivals the amount of whinging & questioning surrounding referee’s.

I can’t rememeber the last time I saw a post match interview where the losing teams coach or captain didn’t have some sort of issue with the match officials.

I heard the comment and I thought it was pretty ordinary on Furner’s part. He deserved the fine and he also deserves the punt. It’s not as the the Raiders played well in that game, it was more Manly having a very off day.
I wonder what his (Furner’s) excuse will be when they get flogged this weekend by the lowly Parramatta?
The time has come for the Furner dynasty to come to an end.

Most of us had a pre determined view of the game so long as Furner is running the show…..

I am not a fan of the Raiders or David Furner. I am, however, a lover of the game. This seems extremely petty to warrant a $10k fine in my opinion.

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