The NRL has conceded NZ Warriors were victims of a clear missed forward-pass call in their playoff elimination by Brisbane Broncos.
Midway through the second half, with the Warriors behind 24-12, Broncos fullback Reece Walsh slit the defence and floated a pass to winger Selwyn Cobbo that was clearly forward, but completely missed by referee Gerard Sutton and his assistant referees.
As the play developed, Cobbo found teammate Jordan Riki with another marginal pass infield, with the Kiwi second-rower scoring near the posts.
Warriors coach Andrew Webster refuses to blame the clanger for his team's 42-12 loss.
"The forward pass was so wrong it wasn't funny, but at the end of the day, they made a linebreak, we allowed the linebreak and the forward pass comes off the back of that," he said.
"We weren't defending well during that period. The forward pass was wrong, but we're not crying over that and it didn't cost us the game."
If it's any comfort, NRL elite competitions head Graham Annesley has duly admitted the mistake, using different camera angles to illustrate the point.
"It is a forward pass," he said. "The reason we can tell so accurately is, as you can see, it's close to the halfway line and all the cameras on are the halfway line, so you get a very good view of this.
"It's clear that it's a forward pass and it's missed by the officials. There's talk of this being 3-4 metres forward - these things get exaggerated and it's not anywhere near that, but it is a forward pass, there's no question about that.
"You can see Reece releasing the ball in a forward direction, which is what the rule is all about."
Annesely insists there is more doubt over the second pass from Cobbo to Riki, with replays suggesting the winger was still ahead of the ball, when his teammate caught it.
Over the weekend, NRL chairman Peter V'landys hinted the competition's bunker system may need a shake-up to prevent future mistakes like this.
"It will be part of the end-of-season review, as will any aspect of our game that is controversial and has caused any kind of ruction during the course of the season," said Annesley.
"Forward passes are something that do come up regularly, but we've looked at various technologies and we're not confident they will necessarily solve the problem - they may perhaps even give us other problems, by calling out passes that don't look forward, but the technology says they are.
"All these things have to be balanced."
Last season, the NRL trialled microchip technology in its women's competition, but chose not to adopt it across the board.
"There were two different types of technology trialled - very different types of technology," said Annesley.
"One was microchipped football, one was more a LIM tracking, both excellent technologies, but there's the technology aspect and then there's the operational aspect - how do you use it, when do you use it, is it only in a tryscoring situation or across the whole game? Do we want to be creating more stoppages?
"It's not off the table forever. Technologies get better and cheaper... the commission have not said, 'No never', just not now."
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