It is time for Magic Round and it seems that some things never change. Once again, all but one of the NRL teams will battle it out in Brisbane over the weekend and, once again, the hot topic will be the referees and their use of the sin bin.
One of the most forgettable Magic Rounds, ever, occurred in 2021 when a crackdown on high contact saw 14 players sin-binned and three players sent off. Just last year, during Magic Round, 10 players were sin-binned in total across the weekend. Fears for this year's iteration are well founded, particularly after what happened last weekend.
There were a record-breaking 18 trips to the sin bin in Round 8, with 15 of those being for high contact. It was a weekend where the wet conditions contributed to much of the high contact, with players slipping into tackles, lowering their head height with little or no time for the defenders to adjust. It seemed that the circumstances didn't matter to the officials, contact with the head was contact with the head.
There has been an understandable outcry from fans, pundits and coaches alike. And it's not so much about the "good old days", when you could reasonably expect to get away with anything just short of a decapitation. It's more about how much influence these random 10-minute spells are having on results and how insignificant some of the incidents have been. Frustratingly, there have also been players sent to the sin bin for contact which occurred several tackles prior to a break in play.
Former star halfback and eighth Immortal Andrew Johns is livid.
"The breakdown of this sending players to the bin is absolutely farcical," 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.
"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."
The other farcical thing creeping back into the game and infuriating fans, is players playing for penalties and the sin-binning of opponents. Many players now, on feeling the slightest contact with their head or the weight of a defender on the back of their legs, stay down clutching at their pain, just hoping the bunker will get involved. When fans talk up the superiority of rugby league over other codes, particularly soccer, they rank players taking a dive and feigning injury right up there amongst the biggest differences. Rugby league fans hate it, their game is played by real men, and real men don't fake injuries. Real men barely acknowledge real injuries!
On the weekend we even saw Sharks winger Ronaldo Mulitalo use a captain's challenge after he was caught in-goal in a tackle which involved an accidental slap across the face, as the defender's hand ricocheted off the ball. Thankfully, the bunker ruled against him and the Sharks lost their challenge.
What makes the whole situation even more confusing is that NRL boss Andrew Abdo says that the rise in sin bin numbers has nothing to do with any crackdown, rather it is a result of poor discipline on behalf of the players.
"Let me first say it hasn't been a crackdown at all," Abdo insisted on NRL 360.
"There's been no policy shift. It's always been illegal to tackle high and we've been sin-binning and penalising high tackles for the game going back decades.
"However, what I will say is that we've seen a couple of errors. We've seen a couple of judgment calls that perhaps weren't correct and it was important to acknowledge that, take accountability for that and we'll adjust and hopefully we'll see improvements now in the weeks that follow."
Titans coach Des Hasler, whose side has been penalised more than any other for high tackles this season, was not buying Abdo's response.
"For Andrew to say that there hasn't been a crackdown is wrong," said Hasler.
"The consistency around that is really unclear.
"No-one wants to see contact with the head, and we're doing a good job with that, but accidents happen and it's a forceful game."
There has to be a better way to protect the heads of players, without destroying the integrity of the game that we all know and love. Everyone is wary of basing the severity of the punishment on the outcome of an incident, but it's a good place to start in order to dial back this overkill.
Players are being sent from the field for HIAs if they show signs of a concussion following contact with the head. If the referee or bunker determines that an opposition player was responsible for contact, which the independent doctor subsequently deems worthy of a HIA, then that player should be sent to the sin bin for 10 minutes. Stop the play, tell the injured player he has to leave and call out the perpetrator and send him on his way as well. You could even step that up to say that if the injured player fails his HIA, the perpetrator can be replaced, but he is ruled out of the rest of the game.
For all other high contact incidents, we have penalties and we have the report system. Currently games are being unduly influenced by players being sent to the sin bin for incidents that the Match Review Committee (MRC) later deem were unworthy of further punishment. Bulldogs winger Marcelo Montoya was sin-binned for having a tackled player's head fall onto his chest, only for the MRC to dismiss the charge. In most of the Round 8 cases, the tackled player was unarmed and able to continue.
For now we will just have to trust that Abdo has sorted the referees out, and that their decisions and the decisions of the bunker will be more moderate and take into consideration the mitigating circumstances involved in such a high impact, fast moving sport.
And so we head into another Magic Round, with everyone hoping against hope that the magic isn't completely killed off by a slew of questionable sin bin calls.