Gold Coast Titans coach Justin Holbrook's fiery Round 1 hound at the officials, calling for on-field decisions to be fair and not favour the bigger clubs, has now permeated well beyond the walls of CommBank Stadium.
After the Titans Round 1 loss at the hands of the Parramatta Eels Holbrook took aim at the referee's calling for decisions to be fairer for clubs regardless of pedigree.
This urged North Queensland Cowboys coach Todd Payten to echo similar comments following his side's 28-4 loss against the Sydney Roosters last week.
โThere were some 50-50 calls tonight that went against us and the Titans head coach a couple of weeks ago made a comment and I agree with him,โ Payten said.
โTeams that have been up the pointy end of the competition for a while now or have higher profile players get the benefit of the doubt too often and thatโs frustrating."
Now in part three of this saga, NRL.com has reported that Payten's opposing coach for Round 5, the New Zealand Warriors' Nathan Brown, has called out the Cowboys boss for his gamesmanship.
โThe biggest thing for me is that we had the Gold Coast in round two and Justin obviously felt he had missed out on a few 50-50 calls against Parramatta,โ Brown said.
โHe expressed the same thing; saying that they were a smaller club but in one press conference they became a big club because we got penalised 7-2 in yardage penalties the next week so thatโs my biggest concern โ that people are using it as a platform to gain an advantage the next week.
โLike Toddy and Justin, we are all at clubs that are trying to become consistently up at the better end of the table so for me we want to try and focus on what we can do better and what we can control better.
โWe have lost two games this year and against the Gold Coast we got penalised 7-2 in yardage penalties, which makes it extremely difficult, but we also dropped the ball twice with the line wide open, so I would probably rather put my energy into what we can do better at our club and hopefully win a few more games.โ
Speaking to the media, Brown also kept the potential return of in-form prop Addin Fonua-Blake close to his chest.
โI could but I wonโt be with that one,โ Brown said when asked to specify what injury Fonua-Blake had suffered.
โIt is something that is best kept to ourselves, just for obvious reasons if he does play.โ
Fonya-Blake would give the Warriors a much-needed spark as they hope to build upon their two consecutive wins.
