By MICHAEL BYRNES
AN ALMOST unanimous gasp emanated from the collective rugby league league community on viewing the very first replay of Sia Soliola’s vicious assault on Billy Slater during the Canberra-Melbourne clash on Saturday night.
Everyone who saw that replay knew exactly what they’d seen.
Slater was treated by medical staff on the field for several minutes, during which time the assault was replayed over and over, from various angles.
Once the medicab had removed Billy Slater from the field of play, the on-field referee delivered his verdict that Soliola’s tackle had not met the criteria for dismissal (he was instead placed on report) and the game continued.
In the immediate aftermath of the game, referees’ boss Tony Archer hastily released a statement contradicting the on-field assessment, asserting that the incident did meet the indicators of a send-off, and the player should have been sent from the field.
However, what Tony Archer did not reveal is what the process was that should have resulted in Soliola’s dismissal. Which match official assessed the incident with respect to those indicators? Which official should be held accountable for the failure to send Soliola off? Given that replays were conclusive that Soliola’s assault was late and that the primary contact was with Slater’s head, one is left to assume that it was the video referee who made the defective assessment. Appallingly, Tony Archer was happy to leave that open to speculation.
As a backfoot, reactive organisation by nature, the NRL will probably knee-jerk themselves into releasing some kind of positive media statement about the adequacy of their approach to foul play and player welfare, before promptly returning to their core business of diddling the players out of their fair share of the game’s considerable financial spoils, a la Cricket Australia.
