Context is everything

There’s a degree of furore over the Lindsay Thomas-Ben Reid incident in the Kangaroos–Barcodes game.

 

 

As the game footage makes pretty clear, Thomas makes contact with Reid roughly 10 metres off the ball as Reid chases a North player toward the boundary. In the image above, the ball is shown against the crowd, almost directly above Alan Toovey’s head. It is clearly more than 5 metres from Reid.

 

Had there not been a head clash, no-one would take a scrap of notice of this incident. Despite the Laws of the Game specifying that a player cannot be shepherded unless within 5 metres of the ball, shepherds and blocks similar to this are absolutely unremarkable.

 

It’s also unremarkable that the Match Review Panel seems to be working to a different set of standards to the rest of us.