Kalyn Ponga's alarming act that shows the contentious NRL 'blockers' rule needs to go in the bin

OPINION

The controversial 'blockers' rule has quickly become one of the most despised issues in rugby league and nothing Graham Annesley has said will change that. On Monday, the NRL head of football fronted his weekly media briefing - which has fast become a circus for many fans - and proceeded to explain why referee Gerard Sutton was right to penalise Newcastle and Cronulla players for blocking defenders as they tried to put pressure on field goal kickers Kalyn Ponga and Daniel Atkinson in the Sharks' 19-18 golden point win.

The NRL introduced the contentious new rule this season to stop players from taking up positions near the ruck with the sole purpose of obstructing defenders trying to put pressure on kickers. The thing is, no one from the Knights or the Sharks appeared to do that on Sunday and what seems like the entire NRL world - apart from Annesley - agrees. Coaches, players, fans and many of the game's greats have all come out and panned the rule despite Annesley's best efforts to convince us we're wrong.

"I've said on multiple occasions throughout the course of the year in these types of situations, if you don't want to take the risk of having a field goal disallowed, don't put these players in this position," Annesley said in Monday's briefing. "You're inviting the referee to take action. Why do they need to be there? They're clearly not receiving the ball, they know who the ball is going to so why put them there? You open the risk of the goal not being awarded."

The most glaring issue with Annesley's take is his absolute failure to understand basic structures in rugby league - in this case the attacking line. In the first instance where Newcastle were penalised, two Knights forwards were simply standing in the attacking line as decoy players, offering themselves as an option to pass to, and by no means going out of their way to obstruct the onrushing Sharks defenders - at least one of whom was offside anyway.

A frustrated James Graham put it best on NRL 360 on Tuesday night when he questioned exactly where those players in the attacking line were supposed to go. Graham enjoyed a glittering career as a middle forward in the NRL and rightly pointed out that those players cannot simply disappear and have to be allowed to stand in the attacking line - ready to receive the ball but also acting as decoys to keep the defensive side guessing.

It's part of the fabric of rugby league for attacking sides to use decoys to deceive the defence, yet the NRL wants to take that away by introducing this ridiculous blockers rule. And as Graham also pointed out, players don't always know exactly when a shot at field goal is coming anyway so to expect them to clear a path for defenders to have a free run at their kicker is outrageous.

Kalyn Ponga act exposes farcical nature of blockers rule

The most alarming issue that has arisen from this whole debacle is what Kalyn Ponga did at the other end of the field after his team were penalised for having blockers moments before. Banking on Sutton to show consistency with the blockers rule, the Knights skipper deliberately ran at a Sharks player and threw his hands in the air theatrically - prompting the referee to award Newcastle their own penalty for a blockers infringement.

Is this really the path we want to see the NRL going down where players can deliberately milk penalties in such circumstances? Many would argue the game has already gone down a similar path to football, where players can stay down in tackles or exaggerate contact with decoy runners as a way of getting a penalty.

Most rugby league fans say the play-acting in football is one of the things they hate the most about the round-ball game, yet the NRL is essentially giving players the opportunity to do just that with this crazy blockers rule. And you can bet there will be hell to pay if an NRL finals game is decided by one of these controversial penalties.

The other thing is, the game never really had an issue with teams using illegal blockers to protect their kickers in the first place. Yet the NRL has brought in a new rule to 'fix' something that didn't need fixing and created an even greater problem by doing so. Annesley needs to stop telling us we're all wrong and accept the obvious fact that the blockers rule needs to be shown the bin as soon as possible.