Does anyone play the ball with their actual foot anymore?

By MICHAEL BYRNES

BACK in my primary school days, I used to love playing tunnel ball. With the right group of people, the appropriate team dynamics, and the requisite appearance fee, I reckon I could still be coerced into a brief cameo in a live-streamed exhibition game.

But enough about tunnel ball. Rugby league is an entirely different animal — or at least it used to be.

A mate of mine recently asked if I’d noticed the absence of the foot in the play-the-ball in 2017. I hadn’t. However, in my defence, if you started cataloguing the deficiencies in the play-the-ball right about now, there’s a rough chance you’d be done by Grand Final Day. I make mention of that exact subject in this recent diatribe.

During the first half of the Brisbane-Sydney Roosters game at Suncorp Stadium (Round six), with the topic of tunnel-ball-style-play-the-balls still under the consideration of my subconscious mind, I became aware in an abstract way of several instances of non-compliant, footless play-the-balls. At half-time, I grabbed a pen and rescued one of the 37 paper aeroplanes strewn around the house and decided to meticulously track that one statistic in the second half, play-the-ball by play-the-ball. However, with the timepiece reading 48:30, I could stomach the task no longer.

What the hell is going on in the NRL’s football department? Have they really thrown the entire rulebook out the window?

In that eight-plus minutes of second-half action, I counted 19 attempts to use the foot to play the ball, and 17 clear rolls between the legs — in eight minutes. Without singling anyone out individually, Boyd Cordner was certainly the worst offender, not even making a pretence of playing the ball legally — just roll and step over.

I encourage the reader to verify these observations for themselves, so conspicuous were they. Of course, every single instance was ignored by the referees. I’m not even sure why they’re out there most of the time. At best, they’ve become little more than on-field commentators — part of the overall entertainment package.

Yet the icing on the cake of perfect irony was added on 59 minutes. The Broncos had forced a goal-line drop-out, and after the restart, Tevita Pangai Junior was tackled about 45 metres out from the Roosters’ line. It was difficult to tell whether it was the pocket referee or the pants referee, but what’s clear on the official coverage is that one of the referees instructs him to “play it with your foot”. That actually happened. I mean, it really stretches credulity to breaking point.

My expectation is the NRL’s football department will clean this area up in the coming weeks. It will be added to some kind of KPI watch list, the coaching staff and referees will focus on it and playing the ball with the foot will again be elevated to some kind of standard. That’s how the machine works these days. And then it will eventually be forgotten and gradually regress back to where we are today. From there it becomes another problem for another time…