Manly Sea Eagles coach Des Hasler blames "inconsistencies" in the umpiring for his team's 18-10 loss to Newcastle.
Hasler took aim at referee Ben Cummins after his side were on the wrong end of a 9-1 penalty count. The Sea Eagles also received 2-1 sin bins, with the Knights occurring in the dying seconds of the match.
"Benny Cummins is a much better referee than that," Hasler said post-match, per Fox Sports.ย
"A much better referee than that. First of all there's an issue there, the fact we couldn't buy some retribution as far as field position was concerned."
Hasler acknowledged that his side didn't help the situation by playing some unsociable football, stating: "I admit we were ill-disciplined..."
Hasler also took no issue with the decision to send Sean Keppie (32') and Martin Taupau (58') to the sin-bin over their high hits.
Instead, the Sea Eagles coach wanted to highlight the discrepancy of officiating of his player's actions with the opposition. He reinforced his issue of 'consistency'.
"Our player attacked the head, on report, 10 minutes. But when Marty [Taupau], when he was carrying the ball he got hit high so to come in contact with the head, forceful contact with the head, that's a sin bin and they didn't get sent to the sin bin," he said.
โWhen we go back and Marty got hit high there was no review of it, no going back to it.
"We need to be consistent about it."
Asked whether he was going to contact the NRL head of football, Hasler didn't believe he had to. Instead, he thought: "Graham will probably call me."
"I know Graham Annesley will be watching and he'll have another sleepless night tonight and he'll wake up with a headache in the morning."
After the match he refused to blame the umpires for his side's loss, he did believe that they didn't help.
"Well done to Newcastle, they got the two points, but they were ably assisted, letโs be honest in relation to that."
