A try made by Kotoni Staggs for the Brisbane Broncos’ four-point win over South Sydney Rabbitohs was revealed to be incorrectly awarded by the NRL.
On March 20, Staggs delivered a 22-10 lead for the Broncos with his third try at 22 minutes left on the clock. It gave the team an advantage that they held onto until they eventually won by 22-18 against South Sydney and former coach Wayne Bennett.
Despite that, the NRL football department’s post-game review discovered an error missed by the on-field officials, commentary teams and the NRL video bunker at the time. They found out that Staggs had knocked on in scoring under the posts.
Furthermore, newly appointed Rabbitohs skipper Adam Reynolds did not opt to use his captain’s challenge to argue with the decision. In relation to his, head of football Graham Annesley voiced out his surprise at the rate of how often clubs have used their challenges in a span of time.
In the first two weekends of the NRL season, there have been 19 captain’s challenges made — a little over one per match. However, out of all the challenges made, only five challenges were able to be successful in opposing an official call.
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Annesley further expressed his curiosity if some of the challenges are being saved until late in the game or if it is used as a tactic for teams to slow down play.
On the other hand, South Sydney hooker Damien Cook shared his thoughts on his new teammate Latrell Mitchell and his two opening performances.
‘Obviously, at the moment, fullback is a work in progress … He’s done some really good things. I think it’s building nicely that for us, we didn’t do right by him as well’, Cook said in an interview. ‘We’re not playing our best footy in the first two rounds. We got lucky on Round One but we didn’t get so lucky up with Brisbane’.
He further backed up Mitchell as a fullback, sharing that there’s enough time and potential for Mitchell to grow into the position.
‘It’s only been two games. We’re one out of two. I think there’s room for improvement as a team and I think that to take him back to fullback right now is probably going to knock his confidence a little bit’, Cook replied to a question asking if Mitchell should go back to being centre. ‘We’ve brought him in to be the fullback and we’ve seen some good signs’.