Let's bring in the refs to kick offside infringements

Halfbacks don't have that much room, writes Justin Marshall. Photo / Jason Oxenham

The offside law has become a serious blight on the game and one way to fix the problem would be to introduce a second referee.

Watching during the weekend as teams tried to attack from breakdowns, there's no way that players are legally defending from the hindmost foot. They are well and truly offside.

It's difficult enough now to shut the attacker down, with all the analysis and the homework being done on teams. To then compound it by allowing players to continually be offside at breakdowns - I just feel we've got to extricate it from our game because it's compromising attacks.

The game is balanced barely towards the attack and I don't feel that's right.

Currently, breakdowns are very difficult for the referee, because there are a thousand penalties he can blow. His main focus is on the flow of the ball from the breakdown, so it's very difficult for him to then switch to the offside line.

So my little brain has thought about introducing a second referee as a trial. All he would be officiating is offside.

You'd still have your main referee in charge of everything else and then a roaming referee who is solely in charge of offside.

Then he can also be a communicator to the players.

He can be saying, "Take a metre at breakdowns or I'm going to penalise you." That reinforces to players that someone is watching for offside - there's someone telling them when they're pushing it and someone who is going to step in and penalise them if they're illegal.

I think the players would become a lot more aware that they can't push the boundaries as much.

You'd get two or three penalties initially in the game and then the players would know they just couldn't be offside because they couldn't get away with it.

We're blowing enough penalties already and we certainly don't want to continually blow penalties for offside but, for the betterment and improvement of the game, this needs to be enforced.

I'm looking at it from a halfback's perspective - I watch that area and I see the first three or four defenders at a breakdown are offside.

Unless you're getting really quick ball, it takes out halfbacks being able to run and it takes out making the advantage line around the ruck.

No more are we seeing the ability for a George Gregan-type of player to drift across and do his little flick inside ball, because halfbacks don't have that much room. They're wrapped up straight away because players are offside.

I think referees are overtaxed at the breakdown and have lost focus on offside, meaning another set of eyes will only help the game.