On certain occasions, worse than that. They're thankfully well in the past, like the playing career in which they occurred, but I was certainly old enough to know better. To look back, it still holds a great deal of embarrassment.

You like to put it down to being young, immature and all the rest, but there's no excuses for it. What time and distance does allow one to do, is look at the why of things. The sad fact is, the behaviour was drawn all too easily from a culture, one that dehumanises referees.

It's hard to pinpoint where it started, but no other sport or fanbase is as absorbed with referees and decision-making as rugby league. It's pervasive and it borders on obsession.

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There must be some Mondays Graham Annesley wakes up hoping Scott Morrison had secretly sworn himself in as NRL head of football. It certainly can't have been fun admitting Ben Hunt could/should have been sin-binned three times in the final sequence of the Dragons' controversial 12-10 win over Canberra in round 16.

He always handles those briefings in measured fashion but the closest Annesley has come to bristling at a question came that afternoon when asked if referees "lack the courage" to make big calls at the end of games.

"If they lacked courage" he told us, "then they wouldn't be out there".

True story. Referees are subject to a pressure those of us who make a living observing the game, and asking such questions, will never know or comprehend. With the advent of super-slow motion replays from countless angles, decisions have never been subjected to more scrutiny.

The pressure on referees is never more immense. That being the case, the natural inclination is to protect them from scrutiny, lock them away from media, fans and all the other traditional pressure points.

It's understandable, but at what point does that extreme level of detachment become counterproductive. Would it be in everyone's interest for referees to be more visible?

Last week the NRL shared a powerful video of senior referee Ben Cummins on its social media channels. In it, Cummins discussed the fall-out to his infamous 'six-again' call late in the 2019 grand final between the Raiders and Roosters.

No rugby league fan needs to be reminded of the sequence of events. As Cummins recalls in the video, he knew he'd "stuffed up big time". He found perhaps the unlikeliest of allies in Raiders coach Ricky Stuart, who made the valid point that no one goes out there to make a mistake.

Still, the cameras trained on Cummins after full-time only hinted at the storm that was to follow.

"When you sign up to referee at the top level you know it comes with fans who are passionate and people that can say things about you and your performance but when it brings in your family and your home it's a different level," he says.

He discussed how dark his thoughts became, dark as they can get. For referees there's also no atonement, at least as far as fans and media are concerned.

Hunt was able to bury memories of his infamous dropped kick-off in the 2015 grand final with his match-winner for Queensland in Origin III this year. For Cummins, there will be no such moment. The best any referee can hope for in such an instance is to thereafter go unnoticed.

If you haven't seen the video go find it. It's a powerful three minutes, made so by the fact that it's not a sob story. There's also no moralistic tone to shame fans into getting off the whistle-blowers' back (though it did make this reporter look back at some aforementioned behaviours with some).

It simply showed a human, a husband, a father and a lover of rugby league. It's something both referees and those who scrutinise them could benefit from.

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It's not to suggest they should be made to front up in the immediate aftermath to justify or apologise for mistakes made on the field, nor that they should be above criticism or scrutiny, just that they should be part of the discourse not merely subject to it.

If we get to know them as people, we'd all be slightly less inclined to unleash the vitriol. It's something we've seen with recently retired Matt Cecchin. To 'come out' while still an active referee in 2012 showed courage beyond even that of many of the players he has refereed.

He has spoken about some highly-publicised mistakes, like awarding a try on the seventh tackle in a 2013 semi-final, and correct but controversial decisions like disallowing a try to Tonga at the 2018 World Cup that resulted in death threats against him and his family members.

The comments he's provided on all of it in recent years, admitting his own fallibility, won him enough respect that he was clapped from the field by the players after refereeing the final match of his career last season.

The reaction to Cummins' candid take has been overwhelmingly positive. We could do with a lot more of it. It shouldn't take a mistake to bring the whistle-blowers out of the shadows.

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