St George Illawarra Dragons Shane Flanagan has provided a telling response after his side fell short in golden point to the Parramatta Eels on Saturday afternoon.
Despite at one point holding a 12-point lead in the game, held at CommBank Stadium, the Dragons let in two late tries, and then had to watch on as their own former star and off-season departure Zac Lomax kicked the winning point which gave the Eels their first win of 2025.
After missing shots in regulation time, Lomax managed to slot on in golden point.
Games being refereed differently in golden point to the prior 80 minutes has long been a point of contention for coaches, and Flanagan labelled it a 'lottery'.
"And then when you go to golden point, it's a lottery. It's a deadset lottery. Whatever they want to say, it's just different in the last ten minutes. If you get field position, you know what's going to happen. I've coached Zac [Lomax] enough times. He missed two, he wasn't going to miss the third one," the former Cronulla Sharks coach said during his post-match press conference.
Flanagan was then asked whether the game was officiated differently in golden point, but refused to answer, with Cook appearing to let out a barely controlled snort of laughter.
Asked if there was a better method than golden point, Flanagan admitted he wasn't sure.
"I don't know. It's tough. I'm not having a shot at the refereeing here because everyone is moving quickly, they know that they have to get kick pressure on and get to the bloke out the back. Markers aren't square and all that sort of stuff, but as I said, it's not just us, it's both sides," the coach said.
Flanagan did admit however that the loss was his own side's fault.
"It's our fault though. It's not the referee's fault," he said.
"It [making errors] isn't bad luck. It's attention to detail in some of the things. We had five errors coming out of our end, a couple on Tackle 2 again, lost balls in contact which isn't up to standard, so we need to look at that."
