‘It does not add up': Legends up in arms over bunker intervention as fears for Magic Round grow

West Australian

27-04-2025

Rugby league legends have slammed the 'farcical' scenes over the weekend that saw 18 players sent to the sin bin in round eight, with calls for the NRL to make changes heading into one of the biggest weeks of the season.
Just day our from Magic Round, which was marred in 2021 by a shock crackdown which resulted in players being sent from the field for minor contact with the head, the issue is again creating concern.
Player safety is at the heart of everything the NRL is trying to achieve with this tougher stance, but fans want to see some common sense shown with games seriously affected by bunker intervention for innocuous incidents that occurred in the previous set.
'The breakdown of this sending players to the bin is absolutely farcical,' Immortal Andrew Johns said on the Sunday Footy Show.
'It's gone beyond a joke. It is embarrassing. The over analysis and the overreach of the bunker in play ... the bunker should be used only for try-scoring opportunities unless it's a send-off.
'It's an out-and-out send-off and they miss it, then fair enough, come in and send the player off.
'Going back eight plays in a set of six where the referee doesn't see it, the touch judges don't see it, the players don't see it and to send someone to the bin is absolutely farcical.'
Broncos legend Corey Parker was equally concerned with the inconsistency from the video referee, with the former representative forward stunned Bulldogs enforcer Sitili Tupouniua was allowed to stay on the field for lifting his knees in a tackle.
Tupouniua was penalised at the time and was charged twice, with the knee lift set to cost him two weeks on the sidelines on top of the three matches he'll serve for a shoulder charge.
'There's an intent to lift his knee and there is absolute force, and he hits Piakura,' Parker said on SEN.
'The referees make a decision that that's not OK and we'll give a penalty to the Broncos and take the ball off you.
'If they (the NRL) are fair dinkum and you have a bunker… then that there is a send off every day of the week.
'Whether you agree with it or not, the intent to lift your knee and to hit someone in the head is not OK.'
Parker said the lack of action in that instance compared to other sin bins for minor offences over the weekend was impossible for parents to explain to their children.
'Right then and there, they didn't do a thing so Sitili Tupouniua stayed on the field,' he said.
'Further on, he gets charged with a grade two contrary contact charge after the game, but nothing was done (on the field).
'If that hit him in the jaw or the side of the temple, for example, then we're talking about a completely different story.
'Yet we see from the NRL when someone grazes the nose of somebody that he's spending 10 in the bin.
'It just does not add up.
'If you're sitting there as a father and you've got a couple of kids alongside you and they see player A leave the field for a high shot and you explain to your children that it's not OK and they're trying to stamp it out.
'And then you see Sitili Tupouniua raise the knee which is a terrible act and he stays on the field. If your kids ask why he stays on the field, you've got absolutely no answer.
'It's a real challenge for the NRL at the moment, and they need to make a stance.'