RUGBY LEAGUE
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The establishment of a video referees' bunker next season will enable the NRL to introduce a captain's challenge, announce judiciary charges at full-time, reduce interchanges and enhance the value of the broadcast rights, as well as helping match officials to make decisions faster and more accurately.
NRL head of football Todd Greenberg is ready to recommend the NRL make a multi-million investment in a high-tech video referees' bunker similar to those now used by all major United States sporting codes after an 11-match trial over the past three rounds.
Fairfax Media was invited to sit in NRL's central command centre at ANZ Stadium on Monday night as Luke Patten and Bernard Sutton used five screens to check and review the calls as they were being made in the Sydney Roosters-Melbourne clash at Allianz Stadium, and can confirm that the system will lead to significantly quicker decision making.
While referee Gerard Sutton did not seek a review of any of the Roosters' four tries, data from Sunday's Warriors-Knights match shows that it took the officials in the bunker an average of 20.3 seconds to rule on the six tries referred compared to an average of 58.5 seconds taken by the video referee at Mt Smart Stadium.
The officials involved in the trial would have also overturned a try awarded to Newcastle prop Kade Snowden last Monday night against Brisbane because the video referee did not have sufficient evidence to do so from the footage shown to him by the broadcaster on one screen in a room at Hunter Stadium.
However, Greenberg believes the introduction of a central command centre for video referees will have other benefits for the game, including the possible introduction of a captain's challenge and the ability for the match review committee to announce charges at full-time.
"This is a game changer on so many different levels and there are other parts of the NRL business, particularly football, that will change also, so things like match review and the judiciary will change significantly with a real time operation," Greenberg said.
"We are at the very start of this but the opportunities are endless.
"It gives us the ability to seriously consider a captain's challenge and we could have the match review committee here looking at incidents while the game is on and then announcing the charges after full-time.
"This is linked to the interchange review as well because as you are trying to build fatigue into the game clearly at the moment we are getting all these stoppages but if you take all of those out the fatigue on the players will be significantly more."
With the amount of stoppage time for video referee decisions on tries reduced by 3min 49sec in Sunday's Warriors-Knights match, broadcasters can slot in more advertisements during their coverage and Greenberg said that could add to the value of the television rights.
The NRL's broadcast partners, Channel Nine, Fox Sports and Sky Sports, have been involved in the trial, along with digital rights holder and major sponsor Telstra, and Greenberg said they were supportive.
"We want the game to be continuous and we want the fans to watch something they genuinely are engaged in, and the long stoppages currently under the video referee model do the opposite of that," Greenberg said.
"What we have seen clearly over the 11 games so far is that accuracy levels have improved, efficiency levels have improved significantly so there is a decrease in time and we have seen a more consistent approach with less people involved."
There will be one more trial next weekend before NRL officials compile all of the data from the 12 games to present to the ARLC.
Greenberg admitted the introduction to a central command centre would be costly but he believes the benefits make it worthwhile.