Phil Gould has unloaded on the NRL following another round punctuated by controversial decisions concerning physicality, slamming officialdom as “ridiculous” and blasting “political correctness”.
The rugby league guru believes the fact Coen Hess was sin-binned and copped a one-game ban for his high contact on Campbell Graham was “an embarrassment to our game”, and says he’s still baffled as to why Jared Waerea-Hargreaves was sin-binned, after he butted Nelson Asofa-Solomona’s head with his chin.
Gould also revisited the Dale Finucane saga, which saw the Sharks lock serve a two-match ban after failing in his fight at the judiciary against a dangerous-contact charge.
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It’s not lost on the Bulldogs general manager of football that some consider him a “dinosaur” and a man from a “bygone era” because of his views, but he insists that “physical confrontations” cannot be avoided.
“This is all posturing, this is all political posturing … so that the game can say to the fans and the media, ‘We’ve done our bit without trying to affect the game’,” Gould said on Wide World of Sports’ Six Tackles with Gus.
“We suspend, we charge far too many players. The suspensions are too harsh, the fines are too harsh. It’s all ridiculous. Some of the things they get fined for are just ridiculous — they’re not even (worth) penalties in games.
“But it’s the officialdom acting out what they think their job is and saying, ‘No one can criticise us’.
“The Finucane one itself was one of the most disgraceful decisions I’ve ever seen by an judiciary in any sport anywhere. Then to follow that up with the Coen Hess one — to me it’s an embarrassment to our game, it’s a disgrace.”
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The Finucane incident saw the veteran charge out of the defensive line and collide with Penrith centre Stephen Crichton, leaving the Panther with a lacerated ear.
Hess’ one-match suspension ruled him out of Saturday night’s crucial clash with the Panthers in Townsville. If the Cowboys beat the Panthers and the Sharks lose to the Knights, North Queensland will finish in second on the ladder instead of Cronulla, earning a home qualifying final.
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“This is the political correctness that our game now is,” Gould added.
“I don’t know what they want the game to look like. I really don’t.
“I still don’t know why Jared Waerea-Hargreaves was sent from the field the other night. I still don’t know why.
“The people that they’re trying to appease or protect … a lot of them don’t even love our game. They’re more worried about their opinions than anyone else. But the people that they’re trying to appease or protect aren’t going to play our game anyway — not at this level.
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“This level isn’t for everyone. Trust me. They’re a very special breed of competitor and talent and athlete that plays at this level. Right? You can have what we saw in Origin or you can have this battle where big men are going at each other and referees are panicking and judiciaries are panicking and Bunkers are panicking … but I’m telling you, there is a 10-year-old kid sitting on the lounge room floor looking at it saying, ‘I want to be there, that’s where I want to be, that’s what I want to do’. And it’s not for everyone.
“It shouldn’t be for everyone. We’re trying to make a game that’s for everyone to play NRL. It shouldn’t be.
“There are recreational forms of the game: touch and tag and junior league and social football … there are all sorts of grades to accommodate all sorts of passions for the game, but when you get to this NRL level, let me tell you, the number of kids that sacrifice so much and work so hard … to play NRL and never do, never do, (is enormous).
“They just can’t get there. I can’t tell you how tough and how strong and how resilient … it’s a part of their make-up, the NRL footballer.”
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Gould played 107 first-grade games for Penrith, Newtown, Canterbury and South Sydney in the 1970s and 1980s.
It was a time when players like Les Boyd and Steve Linnane emerged as infamous characters on the field in a much more brutal and dirty era.
“People will say that I’m a dinosaur and I’m from a bygone era that doesn’t exist. The stuff that happened back in our day was violent and it was vicious. All that’s gone,” Gould said.
“But you cannot avoid some of the physical confrontations in our game and you can’t avoid injury, you can’t avoid head clashes, you can’t avoid contact with the head … it doesn’t mean it’s illegal, it doesn’t mean it’s intentional, it doesn’t even mean it’s hurt most of the time.
“This is frustrating to me.”
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