I didn't have the chance to watch the Cowboys/Sharks game, but heard the whining on the radio this morning.
My biggest grief is coach's whinging about the number of penalties given not being equal. I thought it was pretty simple, if the team is undisciplined, having a clumsy day, or like sooky boy Paul Gallen happy to give away penalties to prevent the opposing team from getting a try, the penalty count will be unequal.
I have not seen any rule saying penalty counts should balance out but losing coaches and some commentators seem to think otherwise.
Yep, you are 100% correct in saying that there is no rule to say it should be equal.
But you see some/certain teams get punished badly or individuals get bolloxed for things that others are let go in the same game, or even the same 1/2.
Then there are things like recently there was an issue in AFL where one coach called the Ref's Dept complaining about 1 individual opponent they were playing in the coming weekends game. Very bad juju I reckon.
That one opponent was smashed in free kicks for something nobody has been done for in years - it was a forgotten rule, not even the commentators could understand what was going on. The most Shit part is they were coming up to the finals, and this individuals team lost with a lot of help from the umpires and this 'new' interpretation of the rule.. That alone is ****ed..
They say to watch Fridays game to see what 'The Rule of the Week' is that they are told to clamp down on - and its true in AFL, dunno about NRL
