The Manly Sea Eagles defeated the St George Illawarra Dragons on Sunday afternoon, and the NRL has confirmed that one call went wrong during the game. The Sea Eagles had to play with 13 players for a significant portion of the second half, but they prevailed thanks to a first-half try to second-rower Haumole Olakau’atu, which was later determined to have resulted from an obstruction. Although the NRL bunker had called the try, Graham Annesley, the NRL’s head of football, said Kyle Flanagan was obstructed by Ben Trbojevic.
“You can see Ben Trbojevic running through there and this was reviewed by the bunker,” Annesley stated.
“If you take a closer look, you can see that Ben is moving through, that the ball crosses his back, and that Ben and Kyle Flanagan are now in touch.
“Haumole then reappears through the opening Ben made. At this moment, it’s evident that Kyle Flanagan needs to shift around since Ben is in the way of the ball carrier. In the end, he manages to reach Haumole, but not well enough to stop the try from being scored.
“Not only has Ben made contact with the outside shoulder of Flanagan, he has also stopped in the line. He hasn’t prevented Kyle from getting there, but there is definitely an impact on how he got there and whether he could have been in a better position from preventing that try from being scored.
“Bunker decisions on obstruction are controversial at times, we are the first to admit that. They often divide opinion. On balance, we have looked at it this morning, admittedly with much more time than the bunker had to look at this, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that in our view, based on the way we have ruled on these things in previous cases that this try should have been overturned and not upheld.”
Two other controversial decisions – both on Dragons’ tries, were proven to be correct, however.
The first of those came on a Zac Lomax aerial effort. Leaping for a kick, the bunker ruled he had knocked the ball on into a Manly defender, despite appearing to drag the ball backwards.