Latrell Mitchell has been called out for “contradicting himself” after claiming he didn’t purposely stay down in a bid to get a penalty during the Rabbitohs’ 30-14 elimination final win over the Roosters.
Speaking to the media on Tuesday, the Rabbitohs superstar joked “call me Trell Milk now” before hitting back at suggestions he tried to milk a penalty after a tackle involving Jared Waerea-Hargreaves.
“I didn’t do anything (wrong). I didn’t lay down. I got up on my knee and looked up at the ref and said ‘what’s going on?’”
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However, NRL 360 co-host Paul Kent believes Mitchell’s comments have actually done more harm than good.
“If you let him talk long enough, he beats himself with his own argument,” he said.
“He started out today’s press conference talking about how he doesn’t lay down for penalties and by the end of it he was talking about how if the Bunker is there and can get involved then it will get involved and that’s the rules.
“He basically started with a defence and then argued against himself by the end of it. I (do) like the fact he has the confidence to talk the way he is.”
NRL 360 host Braith Anasta said Mitchell is “entertaining” when he talks honestly, but News Corp journalist Paul Crawley wasn’t entertained.
“He contradicts himself almost every time he opens his mouth and unless you sit there, shake your head and nod in agreement, you’re one of the haters,” he said on NRL 360.
“But he clearly contradicted himself there because he did stay down, he did try and milk the penalty, it is against the spirit of the game.
“You might be able to get a penalty out of it, but the Roosters don’t do it. The reason they don’t do it is because they’re coached not to do it.
“This is a decision for the players and their coaches to make, that’s who can fix the problem.”
Mitchell’s comments and the incident in question has now blown open the age-old debate of whether players stay down to milk penalties as well as the much newer concern of whether the bunker gets too involved with the game
Anasta declared that the Bunker “gets involved way too much” and penalties should be “left to the discretion of the on-field referee.”
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“Just because they found a loophole in the rules, it doesn’t mean you should exploit it,” Kent said before putting the blowtorch on the governing body.
“The NRL thought they were one step ahead of the game by saying ‘if there is a bit of a delay in the play the ball while he’s down, let’s just have a sneaky look at it in the Bunker, tell the referee whether it should be a penalty and that way we’re on top of the penalties.’
“Within five minutes, the clubs have worked it out. They are coaching — not just Souths — maybe they’re not coaching it, maybe individuals are taking it upon themselves to do it.
“It’s the game’s fault, it’s head offices fault.
“We continually swing with this pendulum of consistency. We want this week’s penalty to be the same as last week’s penalty and we want Friday’s penalty to be the same as Saturday’s penalty.
“Then we see something and think ‘that shouldn’t have been a penalty’… and then we want discretion. So we go from being consistent to ‘let’s just apply some discretion.’
“It is the game’s fault.”
News Corp journalist Dave Riccio added: “They need to blame the rules. The players are able to do it because of the involvement of the Bunker, they know if they stay down there’s a chance it will be checked?”
But while Kent and Riccio believe the NRL should cop the blame, head of football Graham Annesley put the onus on the players as well.
“It’s a cooperative fix,” he said on Monday.
“It’s not something that we can necessarily address just through mandating certain player reactions.”
Crawley then called on the NRL to take action by introducing a new rule.
“If the Bunker doesn’t come in and make adjudications, we had that incident a few years ago with Drew Hutchison when he copped the knees in the back and there was a big blow-up at the time because the Bunker didn’t act,” he said.
“There’s two parts to the occasion, you’ve got the coaches and the players again manipulating the rules to their own benefit and you’ve got the Bunker, which doesn’t always do itself any justice because you get incidents like that Victor Radley sin bin on the weekend where he got sin binned for clenching his fist.
“The only way you’re going to fix it is if the NRL comes down and hits them with a cricket bat. Every time a player goes down, make him go off for a H.I.A, don’t let him do an on-field test, take him off.”
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However Kent raised the counterargument: “We’re not doctors. We’re not there to say he should be going off.”
Riccio floated the idea of returning to the rule where the play the ball is shifted sideways to allow play to continue while a player is down, but Kent explained why that won’t work.
“If they really are doing it to look for a break in play, they’ll just take the next run and head over to where that injured player is and because he’s in the danger area, they’ll stop play then,” he said.
“The other thing is that the on-field trainer will say ‘this is more serious than a guy that’s got the wind knocked out of him, we need to stop play to have a serious look at him’.”
