KEY POINTS:
Here's a plea for the last two weekends of what has so far been a stunning, thrilling, heart-stopping NRL rugby league finals series.
Please, oh footy God in the sky, let the games be decided by clear-cut tries that do not need intervention from the heavens, ie those video referees.
Because as good as the games have been, they could have been better.
Video referees are here to stay, but they are way too prominent. This situation has crept up on us, and perhaps we've forgotten what we are missing out on.
League is not the only sufferer in the quest for refereeing perfection, but it is the most obvious at the moment.
For what it's worth, I reckon the NRL video referees were spot on with their decision making over the weekend, including the penalty-try ruling against the Warriors.
Yet was league really better off? Because equally legitimate and instant decisions - and mainly the same decisions - surely could have been made without the video blokes.
One of the problems with the advent of video referees is that players have become more adept at getting their bodies into positions that at least create reasonable doubt, to use the courtroom term. The game of 20 years ago wouldn't have needed all these rulings.
When the video referee was introduced, many supporters would have had no inkling it would become so prevalent.
This ceaseless quest for accuracy only goes so far before it becomes self-defeating. Sadly, the video referee has become the norm rather than the exception, which takes a chunk of the enjoyment out of league.
The problems are numerous.
Firstly, there is something impersonal about men we can't see making vital judgements hundreds of metres from the field.
The theatre is out there, on the field, where human strengths and frailties, the drama and the pageantry, should be there for all to see.
(Here's a suggestion. Instead of flashing up the ridiculous picture of a laptop to announce rulings, they should flash up pictures of the blokes making the decisions).
The analysis of the video often goes on too long, further disrupting the game's flow. No longer are we enjoying the true thrill of a try being scored, because doubt rather than certainty is the instinctive reaction.
Functionality is overwhelming real drama. Heaven forbid that the grand final is decided by a video inquest - a decision that vital is sure to involve more reruns than M*A*S*H.
The game's majesty is also affected because the big body movements that have long held us in awe are being broken down into tiny, less impressive and even misleading sub-movements. Quite frankly, I just don't want to know if a guy has got his pinky finger under the ball. I'd rather simply assume that he didn't.
And finally, it is not working properly on the accuracy level because coaches are challenging what the video referees are coming up with anyway. Warriors coach Ivan Cleary claimed they were a lottery and even Roosters coach Brad Fittler thought the penalty-try decision that went in his side's favour on Friday was questionable.
You could argue the video referees got big decisions right at Brisbane on Saturday night. Yet the offside call against the remarkable Melbourne Storm non-try, when two players batted the ball back into the field of play, was so marginal you were left feeling robbed.
In other words, this microscopic dissection of the imprecise science that is sport may be winning a few battles, but the game is losing a more important war.
What has really happened here? The answer: professionalisation of referees.
We live in a world of micro-management and (often meaningless) performance reviews that act as safety nets rather than improvers. People get to keep their jobs, but it doesn't mean they do them better. Individualism, skill, flair - they suffer badly.
Truth be known, many employees can do a better job using a few tricks of the trade that the boss doesn't want or need to know about.
Similarly, referees can only rise by doing things "by the book" even if this book doesn't hold all the answers.
You could argue further that league itself, and other sports, have suffered to a degree with an obsession over error-rates. The focus on discovering and punishing mistakes is to art what pouring concrete is to growing beautiful flowers. Instincts are being crushed by a fascination with putting ticks in boxes whereas a few crosses wouldn't go amiss.
These NRL referees and touch judges might discover they can make sound decisions on tries if only they are given the opportunity to do so. We just need to let them be wrong now and then.
Yet referees are marked hard, and they know the safest route is to go upstairs. Players, coaches, and the media crucify them for errors.
The league field is just another workplace, so referees have every right to ensure they are protected. We can hardly promote and demote the whistlers at the drop of a hat without giving them every chance of getting decisions right.
So referees are no longer really the men in the middle. Instead, they have become middle management.
Cleary is, according to reports, an opponent of video refereeing, a position that many will relate to. Hopefully, he and others can suggest how a system that is here to stay can be used better.
It's a subject the NRL should consider very closely over the summer.
