The NRL has admitted Penrith forward Liam Martin came back up to 100 seconds too early from the sin bin in their win over the Warriors on Sunday.
The Panthers were down to 11 men after Jarome Luai joined Martin in the bin, only for the latter to come back earlier than he should have in his their 19-18 golden point victory.
"It was not a system error. The technology was working perfectly. It was a human error where he was allowed to go on earlier," NRL head of elite football Graham Annesley said on Monday.
Annesley also admitted that Warriors wing David Fusitu'as try shouldn't have been awarded due to a hand in touch, and that Luai was incorrectly sinbinned.
Offering no excuses for the errors, Annesley stressed that officials in The Bunker – in this case the highly-regarded Gerard Sutton - are under no time constraints and aren’t rushed into making decisions.
"In these cases there is no instruction to the video officials that they must react quickly, that they must react with only a certain number of replays," said Annesley. "The most important thing is to get the decision right and they can look at it as many times as they want.
“There's no real answer I can give you about why they're missed. These decisions are made in pressure situations, human frailty just fails us.
"No one is trying to make errors and sometimes these things don't become completely clear until they're looked at in much more detail when there is no pressure on."
Sutton's mistakes could cost him his spot in the upcoming State of Origin decider.
AAP/Newshub.
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