Dylan Edwards' startling new confession amid NRL storm around obstruction rule

Dylan Edwards has revealed he's still unclear about the NRL's much-maligned obstruction rule after he was involved in contentious scenes in the Panthers' win over the Roosters. The Roosters had a try overturned after the Bunker deemed that Edwards was obstructed by Jared Waerea-Hargreaves, despite the forward being well past the Panthers' defensive line.

Edwards ran into the back of Waerea-Hargreaves as he was trying to slide across and shut down the Roosters' attacking raid, which resulted in Joey Manu crossing for what he thought was a four-pointer. But because Waerea-Hargreaves impeded Edwards the try was rubbed out, despite the fact the collision occurred some 20 metres away from where the ball was.

The NRL's head of football Graham Annesley later admitted the Bunker got the call wrong and implored officials to have some common sense when making their rulings. The NRL has strict indicators in place to help identify obstructions, but referees can still apply their own judgement in determining the significance of any prior contact on a try-scoring situation.

Annesley said on Tuesday that allowing match officials to make their own interpretations would ensure players couldn't benefit from purposely falling over and overacting. But Edwards disagrees, saying leaving the obstruction rule open to the discretion of officials could cause further confusion for players.

Dylan Edwards admits he's still confused about obstruction rule

Despite being the beneficiary of the controversial call against the Roosters, the Panthers fullback admitted he still isn't particularly clear on the obstruction rule. "It gets interpreted so many different ways. I'd say at the moment, no (it's not clear enough)," he said on Wednesday. "I'm not sure what's an obstruction and what's not an obstruction, depending on the situation."

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Edwards also dismissed suggestions he was too far away from the play to have had an impact on potentially stopping the try. "I hope I would've made it," he said. "I'm not doing my job if I didn't make it but we'll never know because of what happened. Personally, I'd like to think I would've made it.

"You've got to cop it sweet, whatever decision is made, you've got to cop it sweet. You've got to get on with it. It's hard to have black-and-white rules in rugby league, in saying that. So maybe it's just an interpretation of things."

Speaking on Tuesday, Annesley said the NRL didn't want to get too black and white with rules because it would lead to players 'milking' penalties. "How do we prevent (playing for penalties) from being incentivised as an option? You make sure that if there is a doubt about whether a player would get there or not, in some cases, they don't get the benefit of that collision," he said.

"If we make these decisions completely black-and-white, or too black-and-white, then that encourages milking. Because players will say, 'I'm not going to get there so I'm just going to run into a lead runner, and that way there's a fair chance that the try will be disallowed'. We don't want to encourage that. We don't want to see milking."

with AAP