The controversial Manly try that officials got correct - and NRL fans should be happy about it

Daly Cherry-Evans' try against the Bulldogs might have been illegal, but anyone claiming Manly should have had Ethan Bullemor's try overturned is kidding themselves. Bulldogs fans are still up in arms, claiming Lehi Hopoate knocked the ball on and then threw a forward pass to Bullemor.

But the forward pass issue is actually an optical illusion and shows why the NRL are unwilling to allow the Bunker to officiate on whether passes are backwards or not. Due to the placement of the camera, the ball from Hopoate to Bullemor looked like an obvious forward pass at first glance.

But tellingly, referee Grant Atkins was right in line with it and called it backwards. If you slow it down and focus on where each player is, you can see the ball goes backwards out of Hopoate's hands.

Even when Bullemor catches the ball he's still behind where Hopoate ends up, meaning it couldn't possibly be a forward pass under NRL rules. Tellingly, the ball is allowed to travel forward as long as it leaves the hands travelling backwards. Due to momentum and how fast the players are moving, a ball will often be passed backwards and end up in front of where it's passed from (think of throwing a ball out the window of a moving car).

Fans should be happy Manly weren't called for a knock-on

As for the issue of the contest between Hopoate and Connor Tracey, it's hard to believe anyone seriously wants that to be a knock-on. Hopoate and Tracey both went up for the ball in a one-on-one contest, and Tracey appeared to come down with it cleanly.

Hopoate then stripped it from him in a one-on-one steal, before providing the pass that saw Bullemor score. Many claimed Hopoate bobbled the ball into Tracey during the contest, which would constitute a knock-on. But the Bunker examined it with a fine-tooth comb and couldn't find an issue.

And that's exactly the right call for the good of the game. At a time when the NRL has become so over-officiated that fans are turning their backs on the game, for people to want the Bunker to slow everything down and nit-pick the tiniest of bobbles is an absolute joke.

We should be encouraging those sorts of one-on-one contests because they're so entertaining. And why would the NRL want fewer tries being allowed that have been tries for the better part of 120 years? There's undoubtedly going to be instances where players knock the ball on in a contest, but the Hopoate one is so obscure to the naked eye that to take away a brilliant try would have been a travesty.

RELATED:

• Cameron Smith's message to Nicho Hynes amid calls for axing

• Latrell Mitchell in sad absence from South Sydney awards night

Bunker should have stepped in on Daly Cherry-Evans try

If the NRL is serious about keeping fans interested in the game, the nit-picking of knock-ons during those sorts of contests will be a thing of the past. We've seen way too many tries taken away over the last two years that would never have been considered a knock-on until technology and the Bunker went way too far. Instead of complaining, fans should be celebrating a return to better days when the Bunker didn't have as much say on a game.

The same could be said of the Cherry-Evans try being allowed to stand. But as Yahoo Sport Australia revealed on Monday, the Manly captain clearly broke from the scrum before the ball was in, and the try should not have been allowed in that instance.