‘Cowards’: Female ref to go again

The NRL has shown strong support for Kasey Badger, retaining the referee for this weekend’s round of matches after heavy scrutiny followed her officiating last weekend.

Badger will take charge of Sunday’s match between the Sydney Roosters and Warriors at Allianz Stadium, with her appointment coming a day after both the NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo and football boss Graham Annesley put players and coaches on notice about their continued criticism of referees.

Badger was in the middle of several heated conversations with players on Saturday, sending two players to the sin bin, and their actions drew as much criticism as her match-day role.

NRL legend and Queensland coach Billy Slater even called out the “cowards” who piled on to abuse Badger.

“If you think you can do a better job, go and do it. Go and put your hand up to be a referee,” he told the Billy Slater podcast.

“Don’t go on social media and be a coward and abuse someone. If you think you can do better than the person you’re having a go at, go and put the boots on, grab a whistle … you’ve got no right to abuse anyone.

“The referees do a fantastic job, we need them. If we don’t have referees we don’t have a game. I see that as a coward act.”

Annesley said the issue of referee attacks was not “gender specific” and everyone involved in the game had to more readily “accept” mistakes would be made and were simply “part of the game”.

“Even when referees do make mistakes they don’t make them because of their gender,” he said on Monday.

“They make mistakes because they are human. We somehow have this expectation that NRL referees get everything right. They can’t get it all right to everyone’s satisfaction. There needs to be some degree of acceptance to that.

“I do address my remarks today to coaches, players, club officials … whether they are criticising the commission, or the CEO, or a referee, or the bunker, we need to have a better level of tolerance in our game for what are human errors.”