NRL elite competitions head Graham Annesley has defended the referee's decision not to penalise NZ Warriors for a scary midair tackle against Manly Sea Eagles, but signalled a likely rule change during the off-season.
After the Warriors' 29-22 victory at Daniel Anderson Stadium, Sea Eagles coach Anthony Seibold fumed over the incident, that saw Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad collide with counterpart Reuben Garrick in his pursuit of a charged-down field goal.
Garrick landed on his back and sustained an injury that prevented him covering a break by Warriors forward Marata Niukore, who scored the go-ahead try with eight minutes remaining.
Nicoll-Klokstad was not penalised, because rules only cover players fielding kicks on the full, not bouncing balls.
"That's a penalty every day of the week, but the rules say it's not, because it bounced or wasn't a kick," protested Seibold. "How many times do we pull tackles up for a slight crusher and give a penalty... someone slipping up from the chest to the jaw and there's a penalty?"
In his weekly review of controversial incidents, Annesley explains referee Todd Smith and bunker officials were right to rule on the letter of the law, but hints that law may well change at the end of the season.
"The way the rule is structured that way is there are other incidents in games where there is contact with players in midair," he said.
"What the referees have to determine in any kind of contact on the field - whether it's midair or anything else - is whether the contact is dangerous or not, and whether the player who caused the contact was at least careless in the way they approached it.
"I took a view that there was no breach of the rule in this case and whether any action would result from this was a subjective matter, which the referee and bunker took a view on, and decided there was no lack of care exerted by Nicoll-Klokstad."
Annesley warned that changing the rule may have a ripple-affect throughout the game and alluded to the cornerflag tries scored by Warriors winger Dallin Watene-Zelezniak, who is often tackled in midair, as he dives to scored.
"The chairman [Peter V'landys] has already said it will be reviewed at the end of the season and that's fine," he said. "We review rules at the end of every season.
"If the rule gets changed, then the situation changes, but one of the reasons the rule only applies to kicks on the full is because we have to make sure there are no unintended consequences."
Annesley has been pressed hard on his own judgment of whether the tackle was dangerous and he concedes, if Garrick had tipped beyond the horizontal, and landed on his shoulders or head, the ruling may have been different.
"Injury alone is not a determination of whether rules have been breached," he said. "Players get injured in our game in all sorts of situations - they can get injured in legitimate tackles.
"If he'd been inverted and come down on his head, different story."
Annesley confirms the rule will be reviewed.
"If there is a way of making the game safer, we've always defaulted to that... always.
"If we can find a way of making the game safer, without having an unintended consequence on other types of incidents in the game, of course we'll look at that."
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