NRL head of football elite competitions Graham Annesley has confirmed Bulldogs skipper Stephen Crichton should have been sent to the sin bin for a high shot in Friday's win over the Warriors.
The centre was put on report for the tackle but senior bunker official Liam Kennedy and referee Wyatt Raymond opted not to send him to the sin bin for the hit on Roger Tuivasa-Sheck.
Tuivasa-Sheck failed his head injury assessment and did not return to the match.
The incident triggered considerable outrage among fans and commentators and was compared to a number of similar tackles throughout the weekend.
Crichton on report for high contact
Talking at his weekly football briefing on Monday, Annesley confirmed Crichton should have been sent to the sin bin.
"It's purely a judgement error," Annesley said. "The bunker official didn't give due consideration to the impact of the tackle. They do have criteria they look at ... but ultimately they have to make an assessment of how serious that particular incident was.
"It's purely a poor judgement call. A lot of time and effort goes into trying to get referees and the Match Review Committee on the same page but sometimes people's judgement just lets them down. That's what happened in this case, there's no other way of describing it."
Crichton was later hit with a Grade 2 Careless High Tackle charge and will miss this weekend's match against the Sea Eagles after taking the early guilty plea.
The Bulldogs skipper was one of five players to receive a Grade 2 Careless High Tackle charge in Round 25, with four of them sin binned during their matches.
Round 25 charge sheet
Further, 18 of the 23 Grade 2 and Grade 3 charges throughout the season have been sin binned or sent off.
Annesley pointed to these stats as evidence the NRL has been consistent with punishment of high tackles throughout the season, with the Crichton decision one of few outliers.
"Having tackles that are considered to be more serious tackles by the Match Review Committee that result in either a Grade 2 or Grade 3 charge, we want to make sure they are sin binned or sent off," Annesley said. "Eighty per cent does give you an indication that across the course of the season the referees have been consistent with this.
"None of that justifies the error that was made on the weekend, I'm not making excuses, just trying to put some context around it. Because we have been reasonably consistent with this, in some ways it leads to the discussion we've had over the course of the weekend where we've conditioned everyone to recognise what results in a sin bin or a send off.
"Then when it doesn't happen, everyone's up in arms. That can only happen if we're getting most of these right and we are getting most of these right but it's not good enough to get one wrong in any round of football because we should be getting them right."
The Crichton incident was not the only one to be placed under the microscope during the weekend, with Cam Murray sent to the sin bin more than a minute after he was initially placed on report for a high tackle on Tyson Frizell.
Cam Murray sent to the bin
While he couldn't discuss the tackle specifically due to the South Sydney skipper's decision to seek a downgrade at the judiciary, Annesley conceded the process leading to the sin bin could have been smoother.
Warriors CEO Cameron George was particularly critical of the NRL's bunker protocols following Friday night's incident, with the official calling on the league to follow the lead of other sports and adopt specialist bunker officials.
The league currently uses referees in both an on-field and bunker capacity to ensure they can adapt to the various situations that pop up throughout a season.
Annesley said the NRL will conduct a wide-ranging review of the officiating procedures in the off-season with a view to building more consistency in the future.
"We have a lot of games," he said. "We use most of our senior referees in the bunker. They are alternating between refereeing on the field and working in the bunker.
"The reason they're working in the bunker is because they are our most experienced officials and they are in the mindset of looking at an incident and making a decision. That's an advantage and they're on the field each week looking at these tackles live on the field and then looking at them live in the bunker so they're getting both perspectives.
"We will at the end of the season review everything, which includes how we might operate personnel in the bunker next year but there's been no predetermined decisions made on that at this point. We do have to have people in the bunker and we do have to have people on the field."
While high tackles were the primary focus of Monday's briefing, Annesley also touched on a number of other incidents from the weekend.
The official backed the bunker's decision to stick with the on-field referee's decision to award Melbourne winger Sualauvi Faalogo a try in his side's win over the Dolphins on Saturday night, stating there wasn't enough video evidence to overrule the decision.
'We have to remember it was sent up as a try'
Annesley also confirmed the league is investigating how Cowboys forward Mackenzie Weale was allowed to briefly return to the field despite suffering a Category 1 head knock in her side's NRLW clash with the Raiders.
Under the NRL's concussion protocols, players are not permitted to re-enter a game after showing symptoms that fall into Category 1. Weale was removed from the field three minutes after she went back on.
"We're looking into that at the moment," Annesley said. "It was called a Category 1 [head knock] by the bunker, we're making further enquiries about how all of that took place.
"Thankfully it was rectified quickly but it shouldn't have happened."
